Douglas Lighting Controls, owned by Panasonic Corp., has joined a number of tech companies in Burnaby such as Electronic Arts with its new 9,500-square-foot facility.
“There’s a clustering of talent around this area that we thought was beneficial for us in opening this facility in this location,” said general manager Rob Mahaffey. “We get the benefit of having some great names around us as well.”
With the May 5 opening in Burnaby, Douglas Lighting Controls becomes Panasonic’s Canadian headquarters for the design of lighting control equipment in North America. The company has 50 employees in engineering, product development, and application design, and is seeking to hire more personnel.
Typically sold to large office buildings, the company’s products serve to automatically manage lighting levels. One is the daylight sensor, which senses when sunlight enters the space and automatically dims the lights. Another is the occupancy sensor, so when someone leaves the space, the light automatically turns off.
“In a nutshell, what you want to do is have an occupant in a space doing their work, that provides sufficient light for them to do the work and not over light the space,” Mahaffey said. “We automate the controls to maintain the light levels for them to do work productively.
Last year, Douglas Lighting Controls set up the lighting control systems for the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota and Rogers Place arena in Edmonton.
The company’s new Bluetooth system, released in January, allows clients to control all the lights in a building using a smartphone app. The next step is to integrate that technology with the Cloud to allow customers to control lighting from anywhere in the world. Developing this would require more software engineers, said John Cavacuiti, senior director of engineering.
“As we’re shifting to more software-based technology, Vancouver’s an excellent place to find … experts in that field,” Cavacuiti said.
While none of this wireless technology is actively used yet in Vancouver, the firm is working on several projects throughout the city, including at the University of British Columbia, to replace previous generations of wired lighting control technology.
“You don’t have to run wires and it’s more cost-effective to do so from the contractor’s perspective,” said Mahaffey. “We’re trying to move the market towards the wireless direction.”
