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E L E CT R I C AL CONNE CT I ON
S P R I NG 2 01 5
SHOWCASE
The bright lights of Korumburra
W
hen the Korumburra Bena
Football Netball Club needed
a $300,000 lighting upgrade,
the club committee decided the best bet
was to hire one of their own. Mat Walker
of Walker Electrical Contracting is a life
member, sponsor, senior player and junior
coach at the club and as such was well
placed to achieve a great outcome for
everyone involved.
“The concept for the lighting project
actually started about five years earlier.
One of the existing underground cables
to a light tower had shorted out and,
being a mineral insulated metal sheathed
(MIMS) cable that was buried under
concrete and asphalt, repairing it was
going to be extremely costly.
“Instead, we made a three phase lead
and plugged the tower into an outlet 40m
away. This was meant to be a temporary
fix but we ended up using it for about four
years,” says Mat.
This setup provided the football oval
with a dim 20lux at the brightest point.
Add the fact the netballers had no
outdoor lights whatsoever, and there was
a compelling argument for a complete
overhaul of the club’s lighting.
Unfortunately, the club committee
didn’t think they could find the resources
to fund the whole project, so Mat advised
them that the best way forward was to
install new infrastructure to the damaged
pole and then have further lights added
to it when funds became available down
the track.
But when the committee began
looking into avenues for funding, they
met South Gippsland Shire’s grants officer
Penni Ellicott, who suggested the club
had a reasonable chance of getting the
whole project done at once.
Walker Electrical sought the advice
of Pierlite and a lighting layout was put
together. Then, after securing funding
from the state government, the local shire
and the club itself, the project was put out
to tender.
“We had already invested a lot of time
and effort in the project, so we were
really keen to gain the successful tender,”
says Mat.
They got it alright but that was just the
beginning: this was going to be a big job
for a small team.
“Because this was the first project of
its kind that we had undertaken, the
prospect was undeniably daunting. This
was compounded by the fact that when
you’re working in a small town everybody
is watching your every move,” says Mat.
“I was confident I had the electrical
knowledge and the team to get the job
done. The biggest challenge was going to
be managing the project while running
our day-to-day business.”
The project included: two hinged
12m netball towers; two 25m and two
30m football towers (there was an
embankment on one side of the grounds
so two different sized poles were used
to achieve a uniform height of 30m); four
1kW Pierlite Optivision floodlights; 40 2kW
Pierlite Optivision floodlights; a mains
upgrade of 250A three phase; a new
group metering and a CT chamber; and a
new three phase netball court supply.
When his local footy club
needed a lighting overhaul, Mat
Walker made sure he got the
job done right.
Jacob Harris
shines a light on the situation.
Walker Electrical Contracting has
completed its largest ever job by
upgrading the lighting system at the local
footy club.