CASE STUDY: Local Contractor’s Public Tender Success: Lighting Retrofit.
EECOL’s Solution Specialists make big projects a reality. A local electrical contractor faced a challenging project bid to retrofit lights on a prairie hockey rink within a limited municipal budget. The project was highly publicized, with the outcome impacting the contractor's reputation.
Please note: Photos are for illustrative purposes and do not reflect the rink in question.
Challenge
A local electrical contractor was faced with a daunting project bid – presenting the best solution for a prairie hockey rink looking to retrofit lights on one of two ice surfaces within a limited municipal budget. Public tender ensued, with the focus on cost and availability. As is often the case in less common applications, substantial technical specs are non-negotiable.
The project was a widely publicized upgrade in the community, the outcome would unquestionably impact the contractor’s reputation. Although the contractor had experience with rink projects, they had not completed many rinks of this size.
Solution
Realizing that some specialty support was critical, they reached out to the local EECOL team, who connected them to lighting technical specialist Todd Schuler.
Todd and the contractor completed a site visit with the end user to fully understand all requirements. At the original walkthrough, Todd documented current fixtures and gathered details on energy use with the end user. He observed an average 21-foot candle on the ice surface, below average for general use and far below the competitive level expectation of 50-100 fc.
Post-site visit, Todd provided past projects with the contractor and the end user to demonstrate experience. He then prepared good, better, and best solution design options, ranging in cost and technology, for the project to provide context for decision-makers and confidence in the recommended solution. All plans detailed fixtures with energy efficiency, candle and lux specification and the ‘best’ solution included controls. An accompanying detailed audit supplied payback, cost of waiting, forecasted maintenance savings and energy savings.
Results
The audit proved very valuable with the end user selecting the ‘best’ solution due to substantial energy savings enabled through controls. The winning plan further provided a reduction in overall fixtures from 60-40, and despite a reduction in quantity, delivered an average of 84-foot candle on the ice surface. The fixtures had an IK07 impact resistance rating, apt for occasional stray pucks.
Todd and the contractor are in discussions to do the second ice surface and are providing options to retrofit the exterior and interior of the entire facility.
“Public tender projects are unique challenges, and this one hit all the notes – it was quite technical and required proven efficiency and past experience. It’s especially rewarding to have partnered on this one”
– Todd Schuler, EECOL Lighting Specialist.
If you want similar results for your business, let EECOL help boost your likelihood of winning your next job.
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