Hard decisions: Lighting fixtures

Today the electricity people showed to install the lighting fixtures in the lab. I was urgently called to make a decision where I want them to be installed. The issue is that the original plan ignored the fact that there is going to be a storage cabinet along the inner wall, and so had the lights overlapping with the cabinet.

I showed up to find 5 workers idling waiting for the decision to be made. The new furniture was covered with plastic wraps to protect for the reminder of the work. After some discussions we decided it is best to see how things look. Very quickly two ceiling pieces were cut

and then had the fixtures installed in them.

We looked at the ceiling with the two offset fixtures for a while

Finally, we decided that the one closer to the central beam is better (you have to imagine a cabinet below the ceiling on the left).

The next question was how to position the fixtures on the other side of the beam. Whether to go for a symmetric setting or mirror the offset of the other half.

After another test, I decided to go with the straight-down-the-middle approach for this side. You can see in the picture the red fire safety lights and the fresh air inlets.