Multifamily Lighting Packages

A multifamily lighting package is a different problem from a single building fit-out, and the difference is repetition. One fixture decision gets multiplied by two hundred units, so a small error in selection becomes a large error in cost, and a small delay in one item stops a whole floor from trimming out.

What developers and general contractors actually need from a lighting rep here is not the lowest unit price. It is a package that arrives in the right order, in the right quantities, with enough spares that nobody stops work over four broken lenses.

How I handle a multifamily package

• Unit types priced as unit types. Price per unit type and per floor rather than as one undifferentiated pile, so the numbers can be checked against the pro forma and against the takeoff.
• Rough-in and trim separated. Housings and rough-in gear land when the ceilings are open. Trims, decorative fixtures and anything with a finish land at trim-out, when there is somewhere to store them that is not a wet slab.
• Phasing by floor or by building. Tell me the sequence and I will schedule the releases against it rather than have the whole job ship at once.
• Attrition allowance built in. Breakage, loss and damage happen on every job of this size. Agreeing an allowance up front is cheaper than reordering four units at a time on freight.
• Amenity and common areas quoted properly. Lobby, corridors, fitness, clubroom, pool deck, garage and exterior are where the design attention goes and where the specification is most likely to matter. They are also the areas most often left out of an early budget number.

What goes wrong on these packages

• Color temperature drift between deliveries. If a fixture is reordered mid-job from a different production run or a different line, the corridors change color partway down. Locking the specification and ordering the whole quantity at once is the fix, which is another argument for deciding early.
• Lead time on the one decorative item. Every multifamily package has a signature fixture in the lobby with a fourteen-week lead time that nobody costed into the program. Identify it at bid stage.
• Exterior fixtures specified as if the building were inland. On a coastal site this is expensive. Wall packs, garage fixtures and pool deck lighting need the corrosion specification taken seriously.
• Egress and emergency treated as an afterthought. Corridors, stairs and the garage carry obligations under NFPA 101, enforced in Florida through the fire marshal separately from the building department. Finding this out at certificate of occupancy is the worst possible time.
• Beachfront exterior lighting that fails the wavelength rule. On a coastal Broward or Miami-Dade site, exterior lighting visible from the beach has to be long-wavelength, at 560 nanometers or greater. A warm white LED does not qualify.

What I need to price it

• The fixture schedule and the unit plans, or the unit matrix if the schedule is not finished.
• Unit count by type, and floor count.
• The program, and the phasing if the building is being turned over in stages.
• Amenity and common area drawings.
• Whether the site is coastal, and whether any exterior lighting will be visible from the beach.
• The budget number you are working to, if you have one. It changes what I propose, and there is no advantage in hiding it.

Common questions

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