Kent street lighting

We proudly partnered with Bouygues Energies & Services (BYES) to help meet the county council’s energy-saving objectives in Kent’s LED street lighting upgrade, which set out to replace 12,000 lighting points over a three-year period.

The brief

As per this project’s contract, every asset and street had to have its own calculations, and every lighting point in the first phase of the upgrade project (a total of 75,000 assets) was to be designed within 12 months. So, we worked closely with BYES to find an innovative, sustainable solution to meet the needs of such a fast-moving project — and got the lighting designs delivered and approved right on time.

The solutions

To deliver on the installation requirements within such tight deadlines, we developed an automated approach to many of the time-consuming administrative tasks of the typical lighting design process. The team that worked on the LED upgrades took inventory and wrote their own third-party programme to work alongside lighting reality.

Great care and consideration were also given to ensure that the most energy-efficient products were used for each road. At the same time, the team ensured that the number of variants was streamlined to help stock management — producing a fine balance between practicality and energy efficiency.

The luminaires we suggested are currently being installed throughout Kent, with the remaining assets — more complex ones allocated to traffic routes and town centres — set to follow shortly after.

The final result

In the end, we didn’t only meet but exceeded the brief’s requirements — helping the client achieve a 65.7% energy saving, rather than the 60% goal. All the way through, we stuck to the relevant lighting standards, showing the client how they feed into the end product for full transparency.

The project has been a huge success since the new lights went operational, with Sue Kinsella, the lighting asset manager for the Kent County Council saying, ‘DFL has been a key contributor to the project, working with both the contractor and ourselves to deliver all that was required of the contract on time and to specification. The team has gone above and beyond to ensure that we have met our targets’. We wouldn’t have it any other way!