The Metropolitan Washington chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) honored M.C. Dean as an Engineering Excellence Honor award winner for our work on Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (Metro) Platform LED Lighting Replacement project. Each year, ACEC chapters across the country recognize projects that demonstrate an exceptional degree of innovation, creativity, and social, economic, and environmental benefits.
“Our approach to this project exemplifies the benefits of modular design to maximize reliability, speed to delivery, cost savings, and safety for our customers,” said Mike Keatley, M.C. Dean senior vice president of Engineering & Construction. “We exceeded goals and expectations, delivering state-of-the-art modular solutions with minimal impact to station operations.”
Metro selected M.C. Dean to provide electrical design-build work for its station lighting systems, including trackbed, pylon, and parapet lighting, and upgrade inefficient fluorescents to new state-of-the-art energy-efficient LED lighting. Key objectives were to improve brightness and safety, reduce energy consumption, and improve lighting maintenance at Metro’s underground rail stations.
M.C. Dean identified a modular prefabrication approach to overcome the schedule, safety, and quality challenges presented by working on active station tracks. The company created highly detailed lighting system designs based on station platform configurations, maximizing repeatability for more efficient procurement, manufacturing, and installation practices. The pre-wired “plug and play” design was critical to meeting short 48-hour timelines with zero recordable safety incidents. M.C. Dean’s modular delivery approach enabled project completion six months ahead of schedule and will save the D.C. Metro area 17,000,000 million kilowatt-hours annually.
M.C. Dean employed its Modular Mission CriticalTM facility to deliver integrated LED systems at 48 stations six months ahead of schedule at an $18.6 million cost savings to Metro, while adhering to our core design principles:
Durability & Sustainability: According to WMATA’s Office of Sustainability, on an annual basis, the average energy saving per station is enough to power 40 homes. Our lighting system designs maximize simplicity and utilize repeatable manufacturing and installation procedures, enabling streamlined procurement and vendor management and reduced complexity for future maintenance.
Utility & Function: The new lighting made the underground stations 10 times brighter on average, providing passengers a sense of security, safety, and accessibility while optimizing performance and cost efficiency.
Beauty & Form: Metro’s original lighting designs are an integral part of their historical significance and overall aesthetics. The new systems integrate seamlessly into the architecture to enhance passengers’ experience in and around the nation’s capital.
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.
