Lighting Design and Retrofit Engineering
Lighting is one of the few building systems where a well-executed retrofit pays for itself and improves the space at the same time. It is also one where the incentive paperwork can be worth as much as the engineering, and is more often left on the table.
Design services and retrofit engineering
Interior lighting design with photometric analysis, targeting the illuminance and uniformity the space actually requires rather than a fixture count carried over from the last project.
Exterior, parking and site lighting, including light trespass and dark-sky considerations where municipal requirements apply.
Emergency lighting and exit signage to code, including the illumination levels along egress paths that are most often found deficient on inspection.
Lighting control design — occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, scheduling and the commissioning documentation that makes controls survive past year one.
Retrofit engineering
Existing condition survey and inventory. Options analysis with capital cost, energy saving and simple payback for each. Specification and tender support. Verification that installed performance matches what was specified.
Where utility incentive programs apply, we prepare the supporting calculations and documentation. Furano Pacific Consulting has worked within the BC Hydro Alliance Member framework on retrofit projects.
Emergency and egress lighting
Emergency lighting is the part of a lighting package most often found deficient on inspection, and the part least often designed rather than assumed.
We design to the illumination levels required along egress paths, not to a fixture spacing rule of thumb, and we run the photometrics to prove the path is lit at the floor rather than at the luminaire.
Exit signage placement and sightlines, battery and central inverter options with the maintenance burden of each stated plainly, and the testing and record-keeping regime the building will actually have to sustain.
On retrofit work this is frequently where the scope grows: an LED conversion that leaves the original emergency heads in place rarely satisfies an inspector, and it is cheaper to know that at design stage.
What you receive
Photometric calculations and layouts showing illuminance and uniformity across the space, in a form you can hand to a contractor or a tenant.
Specifications written to performance rather than to a single manufacturer's catalogue number, so the tender stays competitive.
Control sequences and commissioning documentation — the piece that determines whether the controls are still doing anything in year three.
For retrofit work, an options table with capital cost, projected energy saving and simple payback for each, plus the incentive documentation where a utility program applies.
Post-installation verification that measured performance matches what was specified.
Common questions
Is a lamp-for-lamp LED swap enough? Sometimes, but it is the option that most often disappoints. Existing layouts were designed around the distribution of the old source; dropping LEDs into them commonly leaves the same total light with worse uniformity, and misses most of the available saving. A short photometric check tells you which case you are in.
Do incentive programs really matter? On larger retrofits they can move the payback by a year or more. The engineering work needed to support an application is largely work the project needs anyway; what gets projects disqualified is applying after the fact rather than before.
How do you handle dark-sky and light trespass requirements? By checking the municipal bylaw at design stage. Backlight, uplight and glare limits vary considerably between municipalities in BC and Saskatchewan, and a compliant fixture in one is not automatically compliant next door.
Can you work from existing drawings? We can start from them, but on any building over about fifteen years old we assume they are wrong until a site visit says otherwise.