The quick answer to whether or not you should retrofit your manufacturing facility with new, efficient lighting is: yes, you should. But, there’s more to the decision than whether you should or should not—there are decisions to be made about who will do the retrofit. The truth is, your own maintenance staff could easily change out the lighting system and entirely update the lighting if your facility, but they may not be the best choice for this particular project.

Find a company that specializes in energy efficient lighting retrofits. While your own team could do this project, it’s likely that they cannot do it as efficiently or as effectively as a professional energy efficiency retrofit team.

A private consulting firm can offer you thousands of dollars in tax rebates when they certify that your project was done to certain standards. Your own maintenance team cannot qualify you for these tax benefits, so doing this type of job in house has huge disadvantages in terms of tax incentives lost.

A good team of retrofit professionals can maximize the benefits of retrofit efficiency by applying industry experience from other projects to yours, giving you a better end result than you might achieve on your own. Each manufacturing space requires a unique retrofit, and you’re more likely to get a tailored result from industry experts.

If you assign your own maintenance staff to complete a lighting retrofit project, it can take a year or longer—because your maintenance staff has other important things to do in order to keep your production running smoothly and efficiently. Putting an efficiency retrofit on their plate to complete during spare time will distract from their primary work and will take a longer amount of time because of the variety of work they are completing on a daily basis.