Ask Ovia: How does Ovia test and interrogate its products to ensure quality?

The column where you get to put your questions to the Head of the Ovia Lighting business, Mike Collins, and his team of experts.

We made a significant investment in new testing equipment and a cutting-edge photometry luminaire testing scheme in 2020, to bring our light testing facility in-house. We purchased our own Goniophotometer device and signed up to the Gonio photometry luminaire testing scheme, which was created by the LIA, together with its partner Acal BFi, to enable lighting manufacturers to offer efficient third party certified luminaire performance testing.

As well as radically speeding up the testing process for Ovia’s lighting products, the scheme also offers reassurance when it comes to validating photometric measurements such as Lumens per Watt and related performance claims. It gives us the ability to scan light sources and luminaires quickly and simply, and create quality, easy to understand light measurement data.

Full photometric scans can take from as little as two minutes and, once ready, the data is sent securely via a dedicated cloud server to the LIA Laboratory for validation. The LIA Laboratory will then be able to issue third party reports without the need for product samples to be transported around the country or the world. As well as providing upfront validation of the performance of new products being developed, it is also vital to ensure that further batches of products being brought in are guaranteed to be of the same consistency in performance and quality. In recognition of Ovia’s laboratory facility, we’ve recently been awarded LIA Laboratory certification.

Thanks to, Ian Roberts from Property Services for this month’s question. As is the case with every question we publish, a special edition Ovia travel mug is on its way to him!