Craig DiLouie

FMI, management consultants and investment bankers for the construction industry, recently released its Construction Outlook: Second Quarter 2009 Report. FMI’s Construction Outlook, a quarterly, construction-market forecast and supplement to the U.S. Markets Construction Overview FMI has produced for the past 30 years, forecasts total construction in 2009 and 2010 will be down 13% and 7%, [...]

Cooper Controls and Electronics Diversified, LLC (EDI), a manufacturer of theatrical lighting and control products, have entered into a technology and marketing agreement. Cooper Controls has acquired various IP and technology assets and will be the exclusive distributor for all EDI products in North America. Full terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The EDI [...]

Wordpress is a great blogging tool, but it doesn’t allow you to create polls. So I found a little gadget at another website that lets you create coding for a poll and add it to Wordpress. The trick is once you cast your vote, you will exit LightNOW and see an ad with your results. [...]

Construction employment declined in all but 19 communities nationwide this June as compared to June-2008, according to a new analysis of metropolitan-area employment data released today by the Associated General Contractors of America. The analysis, which ranks the 12-month construction employment change reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 352 metro areas, shows that [...]

This is an amazing project. At the Goggleworks Center for the Arts, Color Kinetics‘ iColor Flex SLX strands were manually installed in the glass of the art center, creating the effect as if someone is drawing on the building. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/v/x5zK5pUkX8M&hl=en&fs=1&

The Department of Energy has completed Round 8 of product testing through its CALiPER testing program, available here. Round 8 focused mostly on replacement lamps, including MR16s, PARs and small omnidirectional replacements. Traditional sources were also tested in each application category for benchmarking and comparison with LED sources. Other products tested included three undercabinet fixtures, [...]

The IES Conference Papers Committee is seeking additional work to be presented in a Poster Session at the IES Conference in Seattle, WA on November 15-17, 2009. Topics of interest include early results of research work or studies; new technologies; novel lighting design solutions or product applications; concepts for improving measurement or the evaluation of [...]

After showing signs of stabilization over the last three months, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) plunged nearly five points in June. As a leading economic indicator of construction activity, the ABI reflects the approximate 9-12 month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the June ABI rating [...]

Here’s an article I wrote for the July issue of Electrical Contractor Magazine on the topic of a new residential lighting provision in the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), used by most states as the basis of their residential energy codes, that requires 50% of lamps in newly built homes to be “high efficacy”–that [...]