05 Jun BHA School of Lighting principal interviewed by the Virtual Lighting Design Community – June 2023 Newsletter

I am so grateful to be 75 years young and vibrant.  It makes it possible for me to enjoy life to the full.  I love every moment of every day!

Last month I shared the information about being interviewed by Martin Klaasen of the Virtual Lighting Design Community from Perth, Australia.  Well, at last we can share the link so that you can catchup on what it was about.   Here is the link https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7069509535798890496/. You will find other links within the article on the LinkedIn feed.  We hope that you will find it interesting and enjoyable to read and listen to.

As you will read, we have concluded a Licensing Agreement with a company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to provide a lighting course for their sales staff which will include a special module on Relux Desktop.  We are extremely excited to be far advanced with the preparation of our first online course in Arabic.  Initially, the company was going to translate our English content into Arabic.  Fortunately, we were able to secure an Arabic language pack for the world class software that we use which has automatically translated a significant part of the course content into Arabic.  This once again has put us at the forefront of lighting education, no matter where our student groups are located in the world.  Our students are located in 38 countries in the world.  We are able to translate our content into most languages of the world, providing the number of students who speak that single language, warrant the expense.

We continue to be commissioned to do the lighting design for many projects in South Africa and elsewhere in the world.  We are regularly commissioned to do very complex projects where intricate engineering construction and manufacturing plant requires general and task lighting.

LinkedIn Professional is the best social media platform and most enquiries for new student enrollments and new work originates from our posts on that platform, which is managed by Daniel.

Our follower numbers have increased from 2,191 on 1 May 2023 to 2,489 on 31 May 2023, representing growth of 12.87% in 30 days. Most of that growth has been in the Middle East.  It can be attributed to the excellent work of Ammar Al-Qatamin, our marketing agent in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Our last webinar which featured our guest presenter, Panos Ioannidis from Greece, was well attended by South African and many overseas professionals.  To those who did not attend, you missed a real and magical evening where Panos featured some of the world’s most iconic exterior lighting designs.  Be sure to keep a lookout for our next webinar on 22 June, there is a full feature about this in the Newsletter.  In July, the webinar will be really special.  It will be presented by an extremely talented and most knowledgeable young lady from the USA.  Her content will blow your minds!

By now, I am sure that most of you already know that the EU has passed legislation which bans the production or sale of fluorescent tubes or Compact Fluorescent Lamps from August 2023 in the EU.  All incandescent variants including tungsten halogen lamps were banned some time ago. The EU also has legislation which regulates the energy efficiency labelling for all products including lighting.

South Africa has passed legislation to ban the sale or production of fluorescent tubes, CFL and incandescent lamps from the end of 2024.  The legislation makes provision for those still using any of these tubes or lamps to do so until they need replacing.  At such time the will have to change to LED products. Thereby hangs another dilemma.

Led lighting products have considerably different spectral qualities and performance than any of the old fluorescent, CFL or incandescent light sources which includes tungsten halogen lamps both low and high voltage.  For that reason alone, it is essential to complete a new lighting design using the LED products selected to optimize the energy efficiency and to comply with all standards and regulations including meeting the requirements for the building to meet its energy efficiency rating.

It is worth noting that the South African legislation mentioned above has tried to combine the legislation to ban products with the energy efficiency labelling, although the two issues should be treated separately.

We, in South Africa particularly, are faced with electricity blackouts which the state and the utility refer to as load shedding.  What that means is that we are informed by an application on our smartphones about the times and frequency of the expected blackouts for a given 24 hour period.  That brings me to my question for you to answer: “How can you best optimize your consumption in such a way that you achieve the best possible energy efficiency in your building/s?”

Be sure to attend the webinar on 22 June to learn more.  To register, follow the link here.

Please remember that the webinar attendance is limited to 100 people.  Even if you have registered, it will still be on a first come, first served basis,  Be sure to be in the FIRST Group. We hope to see you there.

I wish you all great business and good health.

With best regards

Philip Hammond

Special Announcement

BHA School of Lighting is proud to announce that it has concluded a License Agreement with Marketing Home Group for Trading L.L.C in Saudi Arabia.  The group owns the Lighting Stores lighting specialists located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Sultanate of Oman, Spain, Egypt and China.

The License Agreement provides certified lighting education of their staff.  The first course in Arabic is at present being prepared.

We are delighted to have concluded the agreement and during this process, we have established an excellent business relationship with the company since commencing the discussions and concluding the agreement in mid-April 2023.

If you are doing business in any of the territories mentioned above, we encourage you to visit their website https://lightingstores.com.sa/en

June Student Birthdays

Charne-Lee Gunning, Sydney, Australia – 2 June
Aris De Vrye, Johannesburg, RSA – 3 June
Jaime Rawesthorne, Cape Town, RSA – 4 June
Mia Koster, Windhoek, Namibia – 6 June
Syed Azadar Hussain Shah, Rawalpindi, Pakistan – 27 June

Welcome to our new BHA School of Lighting Students

Raymond Mokgoetsi, Eurolux, Johannesburg, RSA – Foundation Lighting Course
Gordon Govender, Eurolux, Durban, RSA – Foundation Lighting Course
Rubeshan Pillay, Eurolux, Durban, RSA – Foundation Lighting Course
Sheetal Jain, Gurugram, Haryana, India – Advanced Diploma in Illumination Engineering Course

We wish great success to the following BHA School of Lighting students preparing for Examinations

Charne Gunning, Sydney, Australia – First Year Exams

Ruben Triegaardt, Zierkzee, The Netherlands – Second Year Exams
Armand Gouws, Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), South Africa – Second Year Exams
Leshmook Maharaj, Durban, South Africa – Second Year Exams

Congratulations to the following BHA School of Lighting students

Liam Abrahams, Cape Town, RSA, on passing from First to Second Year
Mia Koster, Windhoek, Namibia, on passing from First to Second Year

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