Chicago Smart Lighting Program

As a part of CDOT’s Smart Lighting Program Milhouse provided Phase III Construction Engineering Services to oversee the upgrade 280,000 city’s street and alley light fixtures throughout the city. The program improved public safety and quality of life in neighborhoods across Chicago by replacing the city’s outdated and inefficient High Pressure Sodium lamps with reliable LED luminaires. The new system improved the city’s responsiveness to outages via a citywide lighting control network that provides real-time updates when outages occur.

The Smart Lighting Program installed 75,000 light fixtures per year. It was conducted in three parts:

• LED Conversion: Replace 280,000 luminaires on 248,000 light poles on 22,753 separate electrical circuits.
• Targeted Infrastructure Stabilization Repairs: Contractors visited each light pole and assessed its current condition. They evaluated the wiring, pole condition, and foundation.
• Lighting Management System: The contractor implemented the start-up and commissioning of a lighting management system using remote monitoring and control.

Milhouse was responsible for the supervision, coordination, inspection, and documentation of the LED conversion and Target Infrastructure Stabilization Repairs. The team was also responsible for public relations with the city stakeholders. Duties include creating and maintaining a project website, designing materials for distribution to residents and businesses, and creating exhibits for public meetings.

Milhouse provided a more reliable and responsive public service through:

• Improved visibility
• Control of lighting direction
• Color rendering
• Energy efficiency
• Longer life span
• Improve public safety.
• Enhance the quality of life.
• Improved monitoring of the fixtures