Case study · Public sector
Ten years ago we replaced the lot. It's why we don't start there now.
Between November 2015 and March 2016, EGG replaced 2,187 light fittings across three Scottish prisons. HMP Greenock, HMP Barlinnie and HMP Castle Huntly. Halls, cells, galleries, ablutions, offices, kitchens and external areas.
New fittings throughout, retrofit kits where the housings allowed it, presence detection and dimming where the areas justified it, and a lighting design produced for each establishment.
It was the right answer at the time. We would give a different one today, and the reason is instructive.
Photography of the Scottish Prison Service estate is external only.
What the job actually was
Fluorescent to LED, at scale, in a live secure estate.
Every establishment was surveyed and designed individually. Work ran to fixed programmes — six to eight weeks of electrical installation per site, all three delivered inside five months, in buildings that cannot stop operating and where access to a hall or a cell block is granted rather than assumed.
The energy case in 2015 was overwhelming and the technology case was simple: you could not put LED into a fluorescent fitting and get a good result. Replacing the fitting was not the lazy option. It was the only one that worked.
And then we watched what happened
Those fittings are now approaching ten years old.
The LED gear inside them is sealed. Much of it has no serviceable parts, no published spares path, and no route to a repair. When it starts to fail — and first-generation LED is failing across the country now — the estate faces exactly the same decision it faced in 2015, with one difference.
In 2015, replacement was the only technically sound answer. Today it usually isn't. The housings are often sound. The metalwork is sound. What has failed is a driver and a light engine, and those can be replaced inside the fitting you already own.
We know how that trap is built because we helped build it. That is not a comfortable thing for a lighting company to publish, and it is the single most useful thing we know.
What changed
We stopped selling a default and started selling an assessment.
Every estate now gets the same three options tested against its own fittings — replace, remanufacture, retain — with the answer determined by what the survey finds rather than by what we happen to sell. Where remanufacture is right, it is done to BS 8887-221:2024, the British remanufacture standard we helped write, with a new UKCA mark and a five-year warranty.
Sometimes the answer is still replace. HMP Barlinnie is a fair example: the establishment is due to remain in service only until its replacement is complete, so matching the lifespan of an asset to the lifespan of the building it sits in is a legitimate part of the calculation. An estate with a defined end date should not be specified like one expected to run for thirty years.
That judgement is the product. Not the fitting.
The work
A programme delivered inside five months, across three live sites.
fittings replaced across three establishments
prisons — Greenock, Barlinnie, Castle Huntly
from first site start to final completion, in live secure estates
of continuing work with the Scottish Prison Service
The relationship has continued across the estate in the decade since, and EGG has recently been awarded a further Scottish Prison Service contract through open tender.
Why this one is worth reading
Most suppliers show you their best project. This is ours in the sense that matters: it is the one that changed how we work.
If your estate was relit in the mid-2010s, the fittings are now the age where this decision arrives. The question is not whether they will need attention. It is whether anyone will assess them before quoting to replace them.
Conversation, not tender
Start with a conversation.
No tender process required. No sales pressure. A straight answer about what your estate is worth.