Group Re-Lamping:
A Brilliant Idea
By Light Source
Does your interior lighting look like a checkerboard? Are your maintenance professionals constantly re-lamping, running up and down ladders and running up your lighting costs? It may be time to group re-lamp, a proactive maintenance strategy.
Spot re-lamping, or replacing lamps as they burn out, is the most common strategy for maintaining a lighting system. Although this reactive behavior appears cost effective, spot re-lamping nearly always results in much higher maintenance costs than are necessary. |
| Adding Up the Costs |
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Every time a lamp fails and needs to be replaced, a specific series of steps needs to be followed. These include filing a work order, procuring ladders and lamps, traveling to the fixture, replacing the lamp, disposing of the lamp, returning the ladder, and completing the paper work. Time is money. In our example, it is not unreasonable to estimate that this list of activities would require 30 minutes. If we estimate salaries and benefits for a maintenance worker to be $20 per hour, the labor cost to replace one lamp is $10. |
| Group Re-lamping Savings |
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Group re-lamping is the practice of periodically restoring the lighting system to new by completely replacing all the lamps at a particular point in time while spot relamping during the interim years. By replacing all of the lamps at once, the labor costs are dramatically reduced because economies of scale eliminate the redundancy of the manual tasks. |
| Additional Benefits |
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Group re-lamping also presents other opportunities. Often when lighting fixtures are spot re-lamped, different color-temperature lamps are bought and installed, creating a patchwork appearance. Most lamp manufacturers produce fluorescent lamps in a variety of color temperatures. Color temperature refers to the apparent "warmth" or "coolness" of the light source.
Another benefit, which is not obvious at all, is higher maintained light levels in the space. All lamps produce less light with time even though energy consumption remains constant. So, if lamps are replaced more regularly, a higher light level will be maintained. Ultimately, group re-lamping is a very cost-effective strategy that benefits all interested parties. |
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