Year

2022

Segment

Education

Country

UK

The Catalyst is a new-build, 8,800 sqm, four-storey college building, designed for apprenticeships and skills-based teaching in a flexible, digitally-enabled space. Located at Staffordshire University’s Leek Road Campus in Stoke-on-Trent, The Catalyst offers social and academic activities in a space that can also be used for events, community activities and much more. Sustainability and social value commitments were at the heart of the project. Open 24/7, it is expected that The Catalyst will facilitate more than 6300 apprenticeships by 2030.

 

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The Brief

The customer required a complete lighting solution incorporating several different elements, and ‘a one-stop shop’ was desired. Having previously worked on numerous projects with us, the customer was aware that Glamox Luxonic could meet all their needs due to our large range of luminaires and cutting-edge lighting controls.

 

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The customer demanded a variety of luminaires designed for specific tasks, such as outdoor, pathway lighting, and indoor track-mounted spotlights. A wireless lighting control system was also required. The largest meeting room, which can be converted into 1, 2, or 3 separate rooms, needed flexibility for the lights to be controlled independently of each other or as one complete lighting system.

 

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The Solution

The entire lighting project was specified using our wireless lighting control system, ‘Glamox Wireless Radio’. This provided the highest level of flexibility, monitoring, and control, as well as the ability to modify parameters in the controlling software. This was used to maximise energy efficiency and optimise the use of the staff’s time.

 

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Almost 1900 luminaires were supplied for The Catalyst building project. The products supplied were wide-ranging in terms of the tasks they were designed for as well as aesthetics. Outdoor products ranged from, the wall-mounted, vandal resistant, O10 luminaire, to the pole-mounted, O55 luminaire for street and pathway lighting. Indoor products comprised of the S80 track-mounted spotlights and elegant, suspended, C90 luminaires.

 

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Some of the luminaires required a design modification specifically to meet the customer’s need for emergency light fittings to maintain wireless connectivity, while connected to a central battery system. Normally, batteries are integrated into the emergency luminaires. An easy-to-use lighting control switch was provided and software set up to allow for the separate lighting control of each of the three meeting rooms, or joint control when using the space as one large meeting room.


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The Result

All the customer’s requirements were met. Today, The Catalyst has a state-of-the-art lighting system installed. Where presence detector sensors are fitted in luminaires integrally, space usage can be identified and the lighting system controlled to maximise energy savings.


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The status and health of the system, as well as emergency luminaires, can be monitored remotely. This means that staff don’t have to walk around physically checking for issues. The lighting can be controlled, and reports viewed, via a hand-held tablet. After some training, users were able to easily configure the lighting system’s operational programming themselves. This proved useful when the lighting regime was changed to accommodate The Catalyst being open 24/7.

 

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Following on from this project, Glamox Luxonic supplied lighting for Staffordshire University’s Woodlands Day Nursery and Forest School. The roll-out of wireless technology and emergency lighting throughout the University is being considered.