Andrew Munro, Senior Electrical Designer at Prism Engineering, is the proud recipient of two awards from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES) this month: Illumination Awards of Merit for Lighting Control Innovation and Energy & Environmental Lighting Design.

The awards are presented for Andrew’s work at NAV Canada’s Surrey Area Control Centre, where he has designed a new lighting system for NAV Canada’s 10,000sqft air traffic control room. NAV Canada had previously been unable to install a new control system with glossy screens, due to the glare from computer screens and below-standard lighting levels. Prism’s lighting design needed to achieve three important features:

  • flatness of the light (i.e. little to no glare on work surfaces and screens),
  • reaching or exceeding government standard lighting levels, and
  • improving energy efficiency.

Adding complexity to this task, the new system needed to satisfy the lighting preferences of a rotating group of diverse individuals, who occupy the space 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In order to design the system, Andrew spent a day interviewing various occupant groups, and months completing lighting simulations. The project took a year to complete, from the initial study to implementation. We succeeded in achieving the three main targets, and also managed to satisfy all employees’ lighting preferences by selecting a system in which each individual lamp, in each individual fixture, is controllable from 0 to 100% lighting level. The innovative design has also dropped energy consumption by a whopping 38%!