By: Paul Pompeo

Last week, in Part 1 of our three-part LIGHTING25 series, our honorees considered what our industry accepts today that future generations of lighting professionals may one day question. This week, we turn from what may be questioned in the future to what may already be unnecessarily complicated today. Interestingly, despite the varied backgrounds and perspectives of our respondents, one subject surfaced repeatedly: the growing complexity of lighting controls.

“What is one aspect of modern lighting practice that has become more complicated than it needs to be?”

JEFF PARKER: “Lighting has quietly gotten more complicated at nearly every step. Not because the work demands it, but because each part of the process has grown its own layer. Controls that need a specialist on site to commission. Specifications that run pages deep to approve a single fixture. A path from design intent to installation where something can be lost at every handoff. None of it makes the light itself any better!”

AMY OLIVER: Lighting a project to the levels actually needed. People have become so accustomed to “lighting up the night” that designers are being asked to design for edge use cases instead of practicable need…on every project!

CHIP ISRAEL: Revit! The continual updating and posting of the project really means that the project is never coordinated. In the old days, the architect thought out the design, and drew the walls. On a sheet of velum or mylar, the walls were sent to the interior designer, who added furniture and ceilings. On the same sheets the lighting designer added the lighting, and then the electrical engineer added the circuiting—everything was coordinated!  Now every slight change creates a domino effect. Instead of saving time, Revit and weekly design meetings are now evaporating fees, so there is no time left for design or creativity.

MARIANA FIGUEIRO: Circadian lighting. Photopic lux at the eye will do for white light sources. Circadian system needs bright days, dim evenings and dark nights. One can get more precise, but precision can compromise utility.

JOHN PALK: While there are various aspects of our industry that are complicated, to me the visibility to a client’s order across multiple manufacturers is particularly complicated. Solving order visibility through the lighting and controls channel across multiple ERPs is being worked on by a few vendors. This effort can help resolve some of the onsite logistics and coordination issues we see today.

SHARON STAMMERS: LED! The complexity for specifying the right type of LED for its purpose makes it impossible for a non-lighting expert to pick correctly.

RANDY BURKETT: Lighting controls! Many clients and end-users simply do not need the level of sophistication found in many modern control systems. They find them expensive, overly complex, and frequently confusing. Less can be more and a better fit for many clients.

LEELA SHANKER: Legal, financial and risk structures that inhibit the pace and scale of innovation? But I chose to work with light—I am probably drawn to complexity and uncertainty [laughs]!

CHRISTOPHER KNOWLTON: Tungsten gave us something we have largely lost—a shared language. Resistance, heat, brightness, and the warm drift of color as you dimmed were concepts any school student understood intuitively! When the industry moved to solid state, what had been a common standard between competitors became a commercial battleground, and a fragmented ecosystem of components and protocols replaced the physics that had once done the work quietly and universally. I’m confident that the same pursuit of greater efficiency that created the complexity will also, in time, be what resolves it.

LEE BRANDT: Specifying and documenting controls has become more complicated than necessary. Energy codes now require networked systems. In the digital world, it should be a seamless process resulting in a reliable system operators know how to use.

ACHARAWAN CHUTARAT: Smart lighting that does not respond to or understand human behavior.

ANDREA HARTRANFT: Navigating the post design process. Lighting budgets are unicorns—value engineering is the norm; pricing is a moving target without pricing transparency and with multiple markups. Submittals are hundreds of pages long, eating up fee and often requiring double checks when approved products are resubmitted along with updated products.

RUSKIN HARTLEY: Lighting controls. They’re the tool that could make responsible lighting automatic, but we’ve made them so complex that ordinary people give up! “Smart” should feel as simple as a switch.

MARTIN LUPTON: I think it’s changing with the advent of the circular economy, but when LED became the standard solution for everything we lost the ability to easily replace components and particularly the light source. They might last a long time but when they do fail, in many cases, the whole luminaire is deemed to have failed. It’s happened in many other areas of life too and we have become a society who replace rather than repair.

CHRISTINA HALFPENNY: Networked lighting controls are still so complex with competing protocols, proprietary systems, and poor interoperability that they drive up costs and create confusion! Pricing adds further complication for bundling hardware and software without transparency. Simplifying standards and pricing clarity would make adoption easier.

ROGIER VAN DER HEIDE: We divide light into daylight, electric light, controls, façades, media and compliance—and then we wonder why the result lacks coherence?

NAOMI MILLER: The specification, installation, commissioning and predictable and consistent performance of controls over time.

COLLEEN HARPER: Energy savings has grown too complex. Allocating carbon-based energy budgets by building type, location, and size – while still requiring lighting/HVAC standards – would simplify compliance and equitably reward efficiency and penalize excess usage.

Next week in our third and final installment: If you could permanently change one thing about how lighting is valued, discussed, or understood by the broader world, what would it be? Our LIGHTING25 honorees share their perspectives.

The Author: Paul Pompeo, is president of Pompeo Group, an executive recruitment consultancy in lighting, electrical, and controls.