The Light Direction Blog:

“Summer School Projects: While the kids are away the contractors get paid” by Frank Grobmeier

It’s commonly believed that schools started giving summers off so the kids could help on the family farms. It’s a great story, but far from true. If you think about it, the busiest time of year on a farm are the Spring plantings and Fall harvests, so student wouldn’t need time off to help on the family farm during the summer months.

In reality, school summer vacation has little to do with farming and a lot to do with city families escaping the concrete jungles that hold heat like a kiln. It’s called the urban heat island effect. As the temperatures rose, rich city families would escape to the cooler countryside for relief and relaxation. That created a problem of half empty classrooms during the Summer months, so legislators and school districts in both urban and rural areas agreed to cut about 60 school days from the calendar during the most sweltering time of the year.

These vacant schools created an new opportunity that still exists today. Summer vacation for the school kids leaves empty schools that are easily accessible to contractors who can clean, repair, paint, build and upgrade.

Today if you drive by a school or university during the summer, you’ll see school buses have been replaced by contractor vans of all trades, including electrical contractors. They are active performing lighting retrofit projects, installing new fixtures and lighting controls, and upgrading building management systems.

June, July, and August can be some of the most lucrative months for contractors who focus on school and university projects, if they plan ahead. The bidding process for these types of projects usually starts months before these schools let out. Some contractors use bidding software to track and follow RFQs, and some Escos perform energy audits and build proposals based on utility rebate availability. It really takes a lot of planning and organized activity to find success with schools and university lighting projects, but that effort can pay off.

School lighting projects are usually no small undertaking, so school districts and universities spend a lot of budget dollars ensuring their classrooms and common areas provide a well-lit and safe environment for their students. Students, faculty and staff spend most of their day inside these buildings, so visual acuity and safety are paramount. Recent studies have shown that 17-20 percent of electricity in schools goes to operating the lighting. So, in addition to providing a comfortable and safe learning environment, there is a financial component to the school’s interest in good, energy-efficient lighting. The right lighting system, coupled with utility rebates and a recent plethora of federal relief funds and grants to help pay for those upgrades, could make a significant impact on a school’s annual budget.

Safety has become a significant reason for schools to fund lighting projects. Whether it be UV devices to help mitigate the risk of Covid-19 and other viruses, brighter LED highbay fixtures that reduce glare on sporting surfaces to protect athletes, or better color and brighter light in the parking lots, pathways and play areas that are used by students and the community—safety for their stakeholders is a serious consideration.

If you’re an Esco or contractor looking to take advantage of these school opportunities some things to consider are: 1. What’s the goal / intended outcome of the project? Is it about improving the lighted environment, Is it an energy saving proposal, or are they trying to obtain LEED or other certifications. 2. Is there a budget for the project? More often than not, a lighting project in a school district has some sort of budget or bid process. 3. Learn as much as possible about the application as this will help in product selection. 4. Focus on the areas with long burning times because these will yield the best upgrade results. There are specific areas of campuses that have higher than normal burn times. In other words, the lights in these areas are on longer than in others. For example, cafeterias on college campuses usually have activity all day long, so these areas have their lights on from sun-up to sundown. 5. Gymnasiums and athletic centers have traditionally been problem areas for lighting because they often use old HID technology which has long warm up times and is prone to color shifts and rapid lumen depreciation. Additionally, lighting in these areas often gets damaged by basketballs, volleyballs and dodgeballs. 6. Don’t forget about the outdoor lighting. Many contractors only consider interior lighting when they think of schools, but the outdoor areas such as walking paths, parking lots and sports fields are a top priority for schools and universities. The outdoor areas of college campuses are populated at all hours of the night, so the administration needs to provide their students with a safe, well-maintained environment—and that includes the lighting.

Let’s look at what types of lighting projects are most popular in schools today: ⁃ LED Tube Retrofits: The Type A – Ballast Compatible Direct Replacement and Type B – Ballast Bypass / line voltage lamps are most common. ⁃ LED Flat Panels and Troffers: These interior classroom fixtures are staples of any school lighting upgrade. ⁃ High Bays for gymnasiums with wire guards: The optional wire guards provide an additional layer of protection in gym settings. ⁃ Outdoor Lighting: These include Post Tops, Wall Packs and Bollards. ⁃ UV options: UV lamps, UV strip lights, and mobile UV carts are installed to safely support any school’s disinfection efforts. ⁃ Controls: One of the main topics brought up whenever school lighting upgrades are mentioned is controls. Whether it be occupancy sensors, dusk to dawn sensors or full building control integration these can be excellent options to further reduce energy and improve outcomes.

So, it’s mid-July, is it too late for a contractor to book business with schools and universities this year? The short answer is absolutely not, but don’t get your hopes up and don’t expect the big projects. However, there are always schools that need small projects done, like retrofitting fluorescent tubes to LED tubes, and those schools often wait until the last minute, finding themselves scrambling to find a local contractor—that contractor could be you!

Getting your foot in the door with a small lighting project can open up opportunities for much bigger projects in the future. It helps you build a relationship with the district, school, or university, and it allows you to create follow-up opportunities.

The time is now to use the remainder of this summer to build your foundation for next year’s summer projects.

Another reason to be encouraged to act now is the substantial number of federal programs and grants that have been implemented over the course of the past 18-20 months directed to improve our schools’ infrastructure and energy efficiency. The feds have directed hundreds of billions of dollars in relief funds and grants to states across the country earmarked for projects to improve the health of students, reduce school carbon emissions, and substantially save on energy costs.

For example, the American Rescue Plan included $350 billion in state and local fiscal recovery funds to support a wide range of school improvements to ventilation, building energy and control systems, and lighting upgrades. And in April of 2022, the White House introduced a new $500 Million Grant Program for school districts that will be managed by the Department of Energy and used to support modernization efforts for public school buildings, including energy-efficient retrofits.

So, it’s pretty safe to assume that during the summer months for several years to come, you will see a lot more contactor vans, particularly electrical contractors, in school and university parking lots. And that’s a good thing for our industry and our families!

So, while it might be tempting for Escos, contractors and distributors to enjoy an extended vacation during the summer, don’t cave to the pier pressure! There is shore-ly a lot of good business to be had during the summer in schools and universities across the country. It’s truly one of the best money-making sea-suns of the year! And Naturaled can outshine the competition!

Frank Grobmeier has over 30 years of product management and marketing experience with lighting manufacturers including decades in general lighting and specialty lighting with traditional and LED sources. He currently serves as on the Fanlight / Naturaled marketing management team and resides in the Chicago area.