GCC lightens up to LED

Of all the work that goes into designing and constructing a building, possibly the most essential system is the building’s lighting. After all, without them, users would quite literally be left in the dark.

Given the importance of these systems, it is perhaps somewhat surprising to learn that proper consideration of lighting systems by designers and consultants is usually left until close to the end of a project, leaving contractors with little or no room to manoeuvre when it comes to cutting costs and finding the most efficient lighting solutions.

Vic Andrews, managing director of Ruud Lighting Arabia, says that this is an issue especially prevalent in the Middle East, due to the pressures of getting projects completed on time and within budget.

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“It is a common problem right around the world, but here specifically because everybody puts pressure on the contractor to complete and fulfil their contract, but they are not given the right tools or are not involved in the planning in the development and installation stages.

“The ideal scenario would be to have a client call the consultants, involve their electrical, mechanical and plumbing contractors, the architects, the interior designers, the lighting designers; they should all be sitting down at the same time and formulating the design, right at the beginning.”

“Part of that should involve the electrical contractor, the installer [of the lighting systems], because they play a big part. At the end of the day, the whole thing is put together [by the developers[ and it comes down to the guy who is going to put it in,” he says.

It is this dismissive attitude, Andrews explains, that leads to an electrical contractor being forced to adopt a price-driven attitude, as he has no knowledge of what performance specifications have been decided upon previously, and is forced by his client to cut costs without knowing what has been agreed upon previously.

“Those guys should be involved at the beginning as well to talk about it,” says Andrews, “The contractor does not know [what has been decided upon] when the tenders go out; he puts his price in and then goes about slashing it even further.

They should be considered at the very beginning, as a part of the process, but frankly they are treated as pariahs, which they should not be, because they are an essential part of the process.”

In addition, this perception causes a problem in the current climate of change in the Middle East. Led by the UAE, the region is adopting LED lighting technology in a big way, having finally woken up to the long-term benefits it can offer users.

The technology behind LED lighting has been around for decades, having first being introduced in 1962. The technology offers a number of advantages over traditional incandescent and fluorescent lighting sources, including lower energy consumption, longer lifetimes, improved robustness, smaller sizes, faster switching and greater durability and reliability.

However, it has only been in the last decade that lighting companies have taken the technology seriously enough to consider pushing the replacement of traditional lighting in buildings with LED lighting systems.

As Andrews explains, this was soon rewarded with explosivegrowth, once the technology was proved viable and adaptable to the many demands of lighting.

“The exponential growth has been tremendous from a performance point of view,” he says, likening it to a bullet being fired out of a gun, “We first started developing LED in June 2005, and we launched our first product in 2007. From then on the range has just expanded.”