At McKinstry, our mission is to make every building we touch more efficient. “Mission: Possible” is a new monthly series featuring people and projects around the country that demonstrate our mission in action.

From the moment you wake up to the moment your head hits the pillow, there’s a constant in almost everyone’s life—light. Whether it’s natural or artificial, in your home or your office, incandescent or LED, light is always in our lives.

In recent years, much of the conversation around energy efficiency and lighting had centered on switching from fluorescent or incandescent bulbs to LED lighting. Understandably so, considering that LED lighting is more efficient, versatile, and lasts longer.

Efficiency in lighting is about more than just changing bulbs, however. This is exactly where McKinstry’s Lighting Solutions team comes in.

Our Lighting Solutions team is made up of five members (pictured above)—Scott Haerbig, Ben Woodhouse, John Doyle, Christian Drechsel and Nick Wearne—who represent more than 75 years of combined lighting experience. Located throughout McKinstry’s geographies (in Denver, Phoenix, Seattle and Spokane), they work on lighting retrofit projects across the country.

This team’s core strategy is simple, but incredibly effective: Simplifying the lighting supply chain to unlock cost savings, profitability and efficiency in the built environment.

For many lighting retrofit projects, the various phases of work (and procurement of materials) is split up among many different subcontractors. This is an inherently inefficient set-up. Our Lighting Solutions team drives efficiency in retrofit projects because of their ability to audit, design, procure materials and oversee lighting projects—all under one McKinstry roof.

McKinstry recently completed an analysis of more than 50 lighting retrofit projects that used the typical subcontractor set-up. Amazingly, the average cost per square foot of a lighting retrofit project executed by our in-house Lighting Solutions team was 33 percent lower than the average cost of those comparable subcontractor projects.

Because we are able to lower the cost of lighting retrofits for our clients, they can then pursue even more ambitious lighting projects, saving as much energy as possible.

The Lighting Solutions team also serves as an in-house lighting thinktank, sharing their expertise with other project teams at McKinstry while discussing and analyzing the latest and greatest in lighting technology.

By simplifying the supply chain to serve client lighting retrofit needs from inception to completion, our Lighting Solutions team is truly making every building we touch more efficient.