Customer Knowledge Base | Direct Service, Construction & Design Support Center

Contact Us
  1. Support
  2. Helpful Programs
  3. Routine Exterior Lighting Surveys

Routine Exterior Lighting Surveys

Our Unique Approach

We perform hundreds of drive-by lighting surveys on a quarterly, monthly and even bi-monthly basis all over the greater East Texas area. 


How Our Process Works

  1. We survey and map your properties with custom cad drafting and labeling.  This gives us an updatable tracking template to use during all of the surveys.  The first time out, we do massive amounts of surveying and data collection and start the memorization process.
  2. We schedule recurring visits on a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly basis and drive by your properties at night. This insures that we are witnessing the operation of your lighting control systems and documenting individual outages. 
  3. We compile the outage report and send you a proper survey document upon completion, usually the very next business day.  
  4. With your approval, we schedule the necessary follow up repairs and/or budgeting as needed. 
  5. After a visit or two, things start streamlining a bit once the maps are caught up and updated to the max.  Note, sometimes it can take a few visits to catch absolutely everything that's there.  Our maps are continually updated literally every single time we perform an outage survey, if there is anything needing to be added or removed.
  6. Since these surveys are performed after-dark, you may want to inform any security staff on-site ahead of time that one of our technicians will be rolling out on a scheduled basis, so that they're aware that we'll be on-site from time-to-time.  From there, we can roll our sleeves up and get started!
  7. In order to begin the process, we simply need some general layouts of your properties, if you're able to provide them, and any specifics you think we need to know about “areas not to survey” or any other odd caveats you’re aware of that we might need to know about, such as security guards, locked gates, etc. 

Typical Lighting Systems that Benefit From Routine Inspections: 

Here's a link to a Sample Lighting Survey Report


Costs

We do charge a minimal fee for these drive-by surveys, this is to cover labor and fuel expense at no profit on our end.  Here’s why we use this model and what sets us apart from “free” offerings you might receive from other contractors:  


The surveys always get done.

Unlike a favor (free stuff), that’s not always the case with other contractors.  We do ours like clock-work.  You’ll get an outage report the next morning when we’re done, and you’ll know exactly what’s out, and for extensive properties, the designation identifier we draft on your custom maps for referencing purposes are spot on and help keep it all straight.


Our approach eliminates the incentive of false reporting, which is often an issue with other contractors.

Nothing is ever free.  Creating incentive to find outages is not good business but that's what naturally happens when contractors are attempting to dazzle you with free stuff, they end up hoping to find lights out.  On the other hand, we hope to find your lights on and operational 100% of the time.  


You’re able to decline repairs.

If we survey “for free” and then there are no repairs approved, the survey process becomes a waste of resources and expenses on our end and creates the need to cancel services. Having the costs covered helps us keep the program on track if you ever have a budget crunch.


These miniscule invoices create a liability document trail.

Transactional invoices create a paper trail or proof-of-program that can be used during litigation, complaints, etc. and allows us to reference the actual survey as a task that was reported and done. Otherwise, it's total chaos and your nice properties are floating around elsewhere on someone’s mustard-stained sticky note.


This article has been shared by Direct Service, Construction and Design to specifically accommodate our intended clientele.  The intent of sharing this information is to better inform the public of these general topics, expand knowledge and safety for all and provide crucial information in regard to their MEP and building systems and/or assets. It is NOT our recommendation that any article recommendations or how-to scenarios be attempted by anyone other than a qualified or competent person.