It’s long been regular practice in the facilities management industry to change all the lights in commercial buildings on a rolling basis every three years or so. In fact, some lighting maintenance contractors will insist upon it when they start a new contract period, as it gives them a ‘known good’ starting point. In the retail sector, for example, this form of ‘planned relamping’ is especially commonplace. In this sector businesses may have several hundred branches all over the UK and replacing all the lamps was viable due to the economies of scale.
A few years ago, when the use of halo phosphate lamps was widespread, this practice made sense. Maintenance contracts were geared towards the expected life of the lamp, and, in theory, replacing lamps on a rolling basis every three years would minimise outages. The contract would act as an ‘insurance policy’ for the customer, as at some point during the contract period all of the sites would be lit 100%. The practice also enabled FMs to spread the maintenance cost over a known period of time, giving them predictability of spend.
However, in the last couple of years the use of more advanced technology has increased the reliability of commercial lighting. With the introduction of tri-phosphate lamps that have high-frequency control gear, lamps can now typically last at least 25% longer than before. Although lamp manufacturers still officially set the ‘sell-by-date’ at three years, the natural life expectancy is longer.
Using the retail sector again as an example, the actual practice of replacing all the lamps in a business across several hundred branches may take your maintenance company more than a year to complete. Lamps that fail after this time continue to be replaced, before the relamping process starts all over again at the end of the three years. As a result, some of the lamps being replaced may only be one or two years old.
In today’s environment, where FMs are under additional pressure to reduce the organisation’s environmental impact, minimise waste and reduce costs, this approach is wasteful. And while it may be ‘the norm’, businesses are not getting the full value from their investment in the new technology, as many of the lamps have years of serviceable life left in them. So why is this practice still prevalent?
One of the reasons why some maintenance companies insist on replacing all the lamps is because they want to avoid having to make additional ‘reactive’ service calls. However, in practice new lamps can and do fail. So when lamp failures inevitably occur before the scheduled maintenance visit, the customer has to call the maintenance company resulting in a reactive service visit. As a result, lighting maintenance technicians may spend a great deal of time driving to different sites, which may be miles apart, reacting to call- outs, all costing money.
Commercial lights no longer need replacing every three years, which means that maintenance practices need to change. Maintenance companies need to offer a proactive service in order to be effective. Some lighting maintenance companies have already recognised this opportunity and base their businesses on an entirely different model, one that will help create a more sustainable industry.
Rather than replacing all the lamps in one go (some of which may still be in good working order), a proactive maintenance company will visit customer sites regularly to see if there are any outages. Customers only pay for the lamps that are replaced, they are not charged for the call-out nor do they sign fixed-term contracts. If nothing is replaced, there’s no payment. One of the advantages of proactive maintenance is that the visits can be planned so that the company can service several customers in one location, reducing van miles, fuel costs and emissions. The FM can still control costs as they can allocate budgets to sites that need the highest levels of maintenance.
There will, of course, always be occasions when replacing all the lights is the only sensible course of action. This may be when a business has acquired new premises, where the lights have been neglected or poorly maintained for many years. In this case, the FM has the opportunity to specify new lamps that are more energy efficient and more suited to the light levels required by the business.
So while technology has moved on and improved the performance and reliability of commercial lighting, the maintenance industry needs to ‘catch up’. If businesses are to reap the full benefits of using better technology, maintenance services need to become more sustainable and proactive.
