How to Make Sure Your Lighting Design Gets on the Finished Project

"The lighting installation doesn’t look the way we designed it,” is a statement we hear from many architects. The design team spends months developing concepts, selecting light fixtures, and working through design development to documentation. But then the project goes out to bid, everything is substituted, and the integrity of the design is either compromised or looks nothing like the original intent.

We hear you!  What if there were a better way to light your project? A way that allows you to maintain control through the bid and VE process? A way for you to get what you originally designed?

There really is a better way. The steps you take in the early design phases lay the ground work in getting the design you want onto the project. It will require changing your approach to the project, but taking the following steps will go a long way to easing your frustration, and will allow for a better design:

• Select the light fixture based on the best solution to the application regardless of who represents the product line. Get away from the package mentality. A package limits your choices and actually increases the cost and likelihood of a VE later, regardless of what you have been told.
   
• Get unit prices on every fixture that you specify. This will allow you to know the total lighting fixture cost before the project goes out for bid. Another very important step is to write into your specification that ALL fixtures are to be unit priced and that lump sum prices will disqualify the bid.
   
• Control the VE process. We have learned over our careers that it is nearly impossible to avoid value engineering on a project. The question then becomes, “Who should control the VE process?” Should it be the contractor that just bid it, or the team who spent months designing the project and has the best knowledge of what the owner wants?
   
• Collaborate with the team in an open line of communication with the architect, interior designer, electrical engineer, and others. Collaborating throughout the design process helps solidify the project expectations and keeps everyone on board with protecting the design and the ultimate goal of delivery to the project.
   

Let’s be realistic. The contractor is going to offer a VE anyway. However, the design team should prepare their own value engineering to be the measuring stick to all other VEs. Substitutions from the contractor should be considered fixture by fixture and not as a package. By establishing the unit price in the original bid, each proposed substitute stands on its own in regard to the effect it has on the project and savings to the owner.

The best way to implement these steps into your project is to include an independent lighting designer as a member of your design team. The lighting designer will take on the responsibility of implementing these steps and delivering the intended design to the project. A good lighting designer will give you a good design, objectively select the correct fixture for the application, uphold the project’s lighting design integrity, and in many cases, save money by mitigating potential problems. This allows you more time to do what you do best! 

In our next installment, we will break down each of the above steps in more detail. If you’d like to find a better way to light your projects, give us a call at 615.596.3001, or reach out to us at shine@dhslightingdesign.com. Feel free to share our articles with your co-workers, or they can sign up on our website at www.dhslightingdesign.com.