The Naval Maintenance and Sustainment Agency (DMI) is the maintenance company of the Royal Navy in Den Helder. The technicians here keep a large part of the Dutch Royal Navy’s equipment in good shape, as well as of other military branches. The agency also acts as service provider for all support services. One of the projects of DMI involved replacing the outdated lighting installation in Dock VI. The existing lighting that was installed had light fittings with sodium-gas discharge lamps. These needed to be replaced by LED light fitting to ensure the lighting installation for Dock VI was ready for the future.
Vicoma’s role: lighting plan in virtual reality
The Electrical & Instrumentation (E&I) department of Vicoma in Velsen was commissioned to take care of the Dock VI Lighting Plan project. Together with an external partner specialising in lighting systems, the team drew up a lighting plan based on the Schedule of Requirements, performed a light measurement of the existing installation and looked into additional user requirements. Considering the difficulty of explaining the visual impact of the lighting solutions purely in words, the lighting plan presentation was put together as a virtual reality model. Wearing VR headsets, attendees were able to see and evaluate the final result during the presentation of the lighting plan. The project specifications were drawn up after the lighting plan was approved. On top of all Navy-specific requirements for the detail design, the specs also covered the assembly work.
Result: new and sustainable lighting installation
Vicoma worked closely with all stakeholders and users of Dock VI throughout the project, which ensured the team was involved in every stage of the process and, ultimately, achieved a more than satisfactory end result. The project specifications for a new, sustainable lighting installation was completed successfully and on time. Thanks to the new lighting installation, Dock VI will be able to rely on much better lighting (higher illumination and less shadowing). An additional advantage is that the new lighting system helps the Navy to reduce its annual energy consumption in Den Helder by 35 percent.
