With a New Year Comes a Refreshed Budget — and New Opportunities for New Facility Maintenance Efforts
As a facility leader, you likely have a number of prioritized initiatives on your plate ranging from multisite asset installation or replacement to standing up new software to better manage workflow and data about your locations and the assets that keep them running. However, one initiative that should be on your list for this year — if not already addressed — is LED retrofit lighting. The reasons for this are plentiful:
- Sustainability is critically important for organizations — and their customers
- Buildings now account for 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions
- To meet the Paris Agreement, the Global North needs to triple its LED retrofit rate
- New regulations are coming that impose carbon emissions from buildings
- First-gen LED lighting solutions cannot compete with the newest LED technology
This is just a sampling of the many reasons facility leaders should prioritize LED retrofit lighting in their sites this year. Coupled with improvements in other asset types, the impact that retrofits can have on both the organization and the world as a whole is both measurable and meaningful. Here, we’ll explore LED retrofit lighting more in-depth and why it must be among your top initiatives for the months ahead.
Key Reasons to Prioritize LED Retrofit Lighting
- Energy Savings — Cost reduction is likely a timely goal for your organization in today’s challenging financial climate. Replacing outdated lighting assets with more advanced and efficient LED solutions brings immediate energy savings.
- Maintenance Savings — LED lighting requires less frequent maintenance than older lighting systems, which results in less expense in service calls, spare parts, total replacements, and downtime.
- Ballast Elimination — A great reason to upgrade older lighting systems (and even older LED retrofit assets) is that ballasts — a device that manages the light output of a lamp — can be removed altogether and the lamp direct-wired into the fixture. This reduces maintenance costs while also extending the burn hours of your lighting. Learn more about the advantages of eliminating ballasts in LED retrofits.
- Energy Management — Energy management systems are a strategic solution for controlling costs, reducing energy utilization, and better understanding energy consumption throughout your facilities. LED lighting solutions have better integration with such tools, allowing you to better control lighting throughout your entire footprint.
- Sustainability — Your organization may have sustainability goals that it wants (or needs) to achieve, either on its own initiative or from investor expectations. Regardless, LED retrofitting of existing lighting is one of the fastest ways to make measurable progress. Learn more about the environmental impact of LED retrofits.
- Illumination — LED lighting disperses and illuminates both interior and exterior spaces better than older lamps and systems. This results in better experiences for customers and employees and can also help with safety.
How to Execute an LED Retrofit Program with Ease
The first step is to determine who will be implementing the LED retrofit program across all of your locations. You might have a team in-house that can handle LED lighting upgrades, but this would likely take a significant amount of time to complete. While you may be able to hire local vendors to support one or more locations throughout your footprint, this would result in significant administrative workload on you and your team.
The best option is to work with a facility maintenance aggregator. Aggregators serve as a centralized solution for all of your facility maintenance needs. Rather than working with multiple vendors for each location, the aggregator uses a nationwide network of proven, experienced vendors to execute LED retrofit programs at your sites for you. Often, retrofits at multiple sites occur simultaneously, ensuring more locations get done faster so you can reap the savings and sustainability benefits sooner. Along the way, you’ll work with a dedicated team of estimating, invoicing, emergency, and account management contacts — not dozens or even hundreds of contacts from commercial lighting vendor companies.
At CLS Facility Services, we’ve been providing aggregated facility maintenance solutions for organizations across multiple industries for decades. Every day, our proven network of vendors is supporting companies with everything from HVAC installation and repair to LED retrofits, signage maintenance, plumbing services, and more.
As your LED lighting retrofit partner, we’ll put our network vendors to work for you to ensure you’re able to realize the benefits of the latest LED technology this year. You’ll enjoy a centralized and complete list of all of your lighting assets made available to you in an easy-to-access online portal, giving you unprecedented insight into your assets and their performance. All program and financial documentation is centrally stored and available to you as well, so you can get the information you need in just a matter of clicks.