BPG Architects Dorking

BPG Architects Dorking

BPG (Brodie Plant Goddard) is a client focused company that is committed to providing a service that meets a full range of construction related professional services in housing, education, commercial and public sectors. They were set up March 1988 and in the beginning only working in the public sector, but as the company became more established, their clientele reflected this also. BPG have grown to become one of the leading consultancies in London and the South East, and they are still growing! Largely and mainly to do with building and quantity surveying the company has a strong emphasis on sustainable development. To reflect their desire for sustainable development, we were asked to change refit their offices with LED’s to make it more sustainable and energy efficient!

The company works in a Grade II listed building in Dorking, this normally wouldn’t be a problem except that there are restrictions in what you can do in the interior of a listed building. The building was lit (very badly as you can see from the picture above left) with track lights mainly. In the office, the track lights, as indicated in the picture, were very ineffective in lighting the office space, and had actually gotten a pink hue which can sometimes happen with halogen lights. The whole office space was dull and badly lit, definitely not a very effective work space.

We replaced these track lights with suspended 1200x300mm LED panels; due to the building being listed and old, the ceiling was fairly uneven, which meant that any lighting fixture directly attached to the ceiling wouldn’t emit even light. With the introduction of the LED panels, you can visibly see the difference between the photographs (to the right; before above, after below), the light is undoubtedly better and brighter! Before the refit was done, the kitchen at the back of the photos was originally brighter than everything else, but you can see how dull it looks now, this indicates just how much brighter the offices were made through the introduction of LED panels.

The reception area was arguably the darkest space in the whole office! The room relied more on natural light than any that was emitted from the fixtures. The walls only had a single track light which faced downward (see picture top right) and only gave a focused bit of light. We replaced these single lights with track lights that faced upward (picture bottom left). The ceiling is white and so when the track lights face upward it reflected the light back into the rest of the reception illuminating it much better than before. By pointing the track lights up (pictures top right), it would also prevent anyone from being blinded by the light! Before our refit, the reception had 50 lux light and afterwards it now has 350 lux light. You can see the visible difference between the pictures, but if that isn’t enough look at the facts and difference in lux light levels!

Where possible, we installed as many 20W LED COB track lights as we could in order to ensure the offices were lit correctly and efficiently. The offices being in a Grade II listed building meant that there were many alcoves and slanted roofs, tracks lights were the best type of lighting to be used (see pictures below) because they can be positioned to face different ways to light up specific areas. As the middle picture below shows, the track lights directly illuminate the paper and the printers which need to have good lighting for operation.

As is evident from the pictures, we have transformed these dull offices into a well-lit, efficient workspace despite the potential difficulties with the building age and the fact it is a listed building.