M.C. Dean was awarded a 2019 Outdoor Lighting Design Award by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) of District of Columbia for its work on the M Street underpass ‘Rain’ installation. The award was presented at the 6th Annual Candela Awards on Thursday, June 27. The project also received a national award of merit.
The Outdoor Lighting Design Award recognizes excellence in lighting design and applications in all aspects of exterior lighting. Each year, IES honors individuals for professionalism, ingenuity, and originality in lighting design based on individual merit.
“We’re honored to receive the prestigious Outdoor Lighting Design Award,” said Mike Keatley, vice president of Electrical Systems. “This project is a great example of M.C. Dean’s design and modular capabilities to engineer solutions that are impressive for the customer and the public.”
The NoMa Parks Foundation selected M.C. Dean to serve as the lead designer and contractor on the project. The company was responsible for the electrical design, modular design-build, LED programming, and installation. The design features 4,000 sustainable LED lights attached to polycarbonate tubes hung from the ceiling. The resulting solution transformed the NoMa district’s M Street underpass into a dynamic and beautiful public attraction that will encourage community development and engagement.
The team executed the project using prefabrication and modular design expertise to streamline integration for the 7,500 square-foot installations. The lights shift as vehicles and pedestrians move through space and vary in intensity to simulate rainfall. The programmable lighting patterns even differ according to the time of the day and the traffic levels.
The M Street underpass ‘Rain’ installation was previously awarded the 2018-2019 Engineering Excellence Honor Award by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Metropolitan Washington (ACEC/MW). The ACEC/MW highlights engineering firms for projects that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value, and ingenuity.
M.C. Dean is Building Intelligence®. We design, build, operate, and maintain cyber-physical solutions for the nation’s most recognizable mission critical facilities, secure environments, complex infrastructure, and global enterprises. The company’s capabilities include electrical, electronic security, telecommunications, life safety, automation and controls, audio visual, and IT systems. M.C. Dean is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, and employs more than 5,800 professionals who engineer and deploy automated, secure, and resilient power and technology systems; and deliver the management platforms essential for long-term system sustainability.
