A New Year - Same Old Challenges!

I hope like me, you all had a good festive break - it now seems so long ago and 2015 has started off at a pace.

The end of 2014 saw the appointment of a new Vice President (Events), congratulations to Scott Pengelly and I look forward to all of your input to our future events, sponsorship and training. If you have any suggestions for Scott or would like to assist him, please contact him at vp.events@theilp.org.uk 

We have announced the opening of two events for exhibition booking - Light Scene and the ILP Summit, with booking being taken within hours of opening, follow the links here for more details and availability www.theilp.org.uk/news/first-exhibitors-of-2015-announced/ 

Light Scene will see the start of a new relationship with the Rail Alliance http://www.railalliance.co.uk/ which we hope will forge closer working with the Rail industry and help members with new training and educational / networking opportunities into the Rail sector, which is a target for our new Vice President (H&I) Alan Jaques, again if you have any comments or suggestions for Alan, please contact him via the ILP

Speaking of new relationships, this week saw the start of a new training partnership with BRE (Building Research Establishment) with the first session of 
Obtrusive Light: Navigating the Compliance Minefield.

We have recently launched a new Professional Lighting Guide 05 (PLG 05): Brightness of Illuminated Advertisements, which you can purchase and find more information about here https://www.theilp.org.uk/news/ilp-launches-guide-to-illuminated-advertisements/

There are number of new events and news items being added almost daily at present, please check the website, newsletter and twitter for more information.

Earlier this month, the BBC program "Inside Out" ran a feature on street lighting and switch off following an investigation and freedom of information request they made for data regarding local authorities and switch off, the full story can be found here although we (the ILP) were not consulted directly for this feature, we have been approached on a number of other lighting issues by the BBC and we hope this will continue so that we can increasingly get the message across regarding Lighting in the public domain.

I do not condemn switch off, it is often the last resort by a LA to meet increasing budget demands, however, as has been shown by the above investigation and program and numerous other press story's, far to many authorities are pushing ahead with switch off plans without proper consultation and safety audits. 

The Institutions approach to this is to provide as much guidance as we can, education and sharing of best practice should provide the competent engineer with a number of resources to apply to their individual situations. 

There is no "one size fits all" solution to our current energy and budget issues, switch off can be appropriate at certain sites, but investing in our future with technology and education will provide a long term solution to these issues.

follow me on twitter @mclight0112