Electrical & lighting systems engineer · Dubai, UAE
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Lighting engineering, from concept to commissioning
I'm Archie, an electrical and lighting systems engineer in Dubai, leading the design and support engineering team at Creation Gulf. I work on architectural lighting, façade illumination, and DALI/DMX control systems across cultural, commercial, retail, and public-realm projects, with a bias toward practical delivery: what gets drawn has to get built, commissioned, and handed over working.
How this site works
It reads like a small wiki, and it's grown into a few of them. This page covers who I am and where I've worked. The projects wiki gives every delivery its own article, and the blog holds longer writing, including a full LEED v4 lighting & controls reference. Use the sidebar to jump around, or the filter box to find something specific.
The short version
I've been in the UAE lighting industry since 2017, first at Smart Select, doing lighting design, lux calculations, submittals, and estimation for projects across the region, and since 2021 at Creation Gulf, where I've grown from design-and-support work through a senior role into leading the design and support engineering team since January 2026. Before Dubai, I trained as an electrical engineer in the Philippines and hold the Registered Electrical Engineer (REE) license.
The common thread in my work is the gap between design intent and site reality. Lighting concepts are easy to render and hard to deliver. The fixture that looks good on paper, the controls nobody considered, the façade detail with no room for a driver. My job is closing those gaps early, so the finished project looks like the concept and the commissioning goes quietly.
Each row links into the projects wiki, where every delivery gets a proper write-up and new projects appear first.
Beyond the drawings
Alongside the engineering work I build tools that make design teams faster and more consistent, mostly Excel and VBA automation, structured databases, and increasingly Python. At Creation Gulf, automated proposal, quotation, submittal, and compliance tooling I wrote in VBA / Python scripts and apps became part of how the team works. It started as a way to stop retyping the same information over and over and turned into a real efficiency gain. More on that under What I do.
Four kinds of work, usually overlapping on the same project: lighting design and electrical engineering, design support and coordination, procurement and commissioning, and tools and process optimization that hold it all together.
Lighting design & electrical engineering
The core of the job. Interior and exterior lighting design, façade and feature concepts, and the electrical layer underneath: lux calculations, compliance checks, and value engineering. It also covers the control-system design, the DALI, DMX, and hybrid schematics, addressing, and zone schedules, plus integration with BMS, AV, and other building systems. Day to day that means fixture selection, photometric evaluation against IES/EN/CIE recommendations, and detailing that actually fits the architect's ceiling plan. A lot of it is designed to a sustainability target, so I work to LEED, WELL, and whatever local or international standards the project is chasing.
Interior and exterior lighting design, from concept support through construction packages
Façade and feature lighting concepts
Lux calculations, compliance checks, and value engineering
Design to sustainability standards, LEED, WELL, and local or international codes
DALI, DMX, and hybrid control-system design and documentation
Fixture selection, photometric evaluation, and installation detailing
Design support & coordination
A lot of problems don't show up in the design file, they show up in the handoffs. A large share of my time goes to technical submittals, shop-drawing reviews, coordination between contractors, consultants, and suppliers, and the issue resolution that always follows once installation starts. The aim is simple, no surprises at handover.
Technical and commercial submittals
Shop-drawing and material reviews
Contractor, consultant, and supplier coordination
Issue resolution through to final installation
Procurement & commissioning
Getting the right products on site and making them work. On the procurement side that's specifying and sourcing fixtures and control gear against the design and the budget, then staying with it through supplier coordination and delivery. Commissioning is the on-site half: installation coordination, setting up and testing the control sequences and scene behaviour, proving it all performs the way it was conceptualized, and handing over clean documentation. When a dynamic façade needs to run a show, or a restaurant needs scene control the ambient actually deserves, this is where it comes together.
Fixture and control-gear specification and sourcing
Supplier coordination through delivery
Functional testing and handover documentation
Tools & process optimization
I automate the repetitive parts of engineering work. It started with VBA-driven templates, quotation, and compliance-check tooling, structured databases, standardized document workflows, and increasingly Python programming, where the same ideas are scaled further. The real test for any tool is whether the team keeps using it.
Why it matters
The point of automating a workflow isn't only speed, it's accuracy. A template that pulls from one structured database can't misspell a detail or use outdated rates. The time saved is nice; the consistency is what actually matters.
Creation Gulf is a Dubai-based provider of architectural lighting and automation solutions. I joined in 2021 as a design and support engineer, took the senior role in 2024, and since January 2026 I've led the design and support engineering team, owning delivery from design development and submittals through supply, commissioning, and stakeholder coordination.
Leading the team (Jan 2026 –)
As team lead I own cross-functional delivery: design and support engineering working alongside sales, accounts, and logistics internally, and consultants and contractors outside, all pointed at meeting project requirements within schedule and budget. I direct the specification, integration, and commissioning of lighting control systems, keep design intent aligned with site realities and operational constraints, and hold the compliance line, meaning the relevant standards and project-specific technical requirements, across both design and execution phases.
How the role grew
On any given project I might still be specifying fixtures against a lighting designer's concept, engineering the control architecture, managing supply, or standing next to the commissioning engineer while a façade runs its first sequence. The senior role added ownership, leading the technical side of flagship deliveries and being the person the client calls when something on site doesn't match the drawing. The team-lead role added the rest: the people, the process, and accountability for the whole delivery chain.
The delivery record is the part I'm proud of. Total delivered project value grew year over year, roughly +75% in 2022, +100% in 2023, and +30% in 2024, and we did it through the same small team. That says as much about process as about sales.
Highlights
BAPS Hindu Mandir, Abu Dhabi, where I oversaw the lighting system implementation for the first traditional Hindu stone temple in the Middle East, working across multiple stakeholders.
UAE National Day celebrations, Hatta, where I led the technical teams for ND50, ND51, and ND52. ND50 earned Lighting Design of the Year at the Index Design Awards.
Masdar Office Buildings M19A & M19B, where I designed and delivered LEED-certified projects including a dynamic façade lighting and control system.
Two quieter contributions outlast any single project. First, I designed and implemented Excel/VBA automation for the team's proposal, quotation, and compliance workflows, which cut manual processing time and improved accuracy and consistency, and I'm now gradually rebuilding that toolset in Python. Second, I've made a habit of sharing lighting-design standards and best practices internally, so the team's baseline keeps rising.
My first Dubai chapter. Smart Select supplies lighting, controls, smart automation, BMS, and energy-saving systems in cooperation with its sister company Noor Ala Noor in Amman, a firm that's been in the business since 1967. I sat in the lighting department with the designers, engineers, and estimators.
The design-and-estimation desk
This is where I learned that a lighting scheme isn't finished until it's priced. The work ran the full arc:
Designing the best-fit option for each application and client requirement, conforming to IES, EN, and CIE standards and recommendations
Architectural lighting design and technical lighting design, the lux calculations behind the renderings
Project estimation, procurement, and quotation
Preparing technical and commercial submittals
Estimation is underrated training for a design engineer. Once you've priced enough schemes, you stop drawing things the project can't afford, and you learn exactly where value engineering can cut without anyone noticing, and where it shows.
The daily toolkit here was broad: Revit, DIALux evo, AutoCAD, and Bluebeam Revu for the engineering, with Photoshop, After Effects, and Lumion when a concept needed to be seen before it could be sold.
The TCI hat
For most of the same period I doubled as technical engineer for TCI Telecomunicazioni Italia, an Italian manufacturer of electronic components for the lighting market, things like LED drivers, modules, and control gear, with over 25 years supplying European OEMs. In practice:
Proposing technically compatible TCI products, electronic drivers and LED modules, against each project's requirements and specifications
Preparing and assembling sample materials for design-stage and retrofit projects
Project estimation and ongoing technical support to clients
Why this mattered
Working the component side taught me what's inside the fixture. Driver compatibility, dimming curves, and thermal limits are the details that decide whether a control system behaves on site. They stopped being datasheet trivia and became working knowledge I still use on every DALI project.
Before lighting, straight electrical engineering: a BSc from the Technological Institute of the Philippines, capped with a distribution-system design project, and an internship that put me on a live hospital construction site.
The degree
The coursework leaned toward buildings and power, with electrical system design for high-rise buildings and power system design, and the major design project was a 2 MVA, 3-phase, 34.5 kV–460/230 V electrical distribution system for a machine shop and steel manufacturing plant in Valenzuela City. Not glamorous, but it's the kind of grounding that makes façade power distribution and driver load schedules feel familiar rather than foreign. The degree led to licensure as a Registered Electrical Engineer.
Outside class I kept busy: champion in the 2012 TIP EE Skills Olympics (motor control), a run at the 3rd Electrical Engineering Mechatronics Challenge that same year, a colloquium presentation of a fully automated PLC-based traffic-light system in 2013, and Head of Concepts and Design for Team GTE Efficacy at Shell Eco-Marathon Asia 2014.
JOMSAR internship
JOMSAR is an electrical works company in Quezon City. Reporting to the head of engineering and the project-in-charge, I managed a team of electricians and laborers, a fast education in the difference between a drawing and a day's work on site. Two roles in particular:
Electrical estimator, producing estimate reports for commercial projects in the engineering department
QA/QC engineer, running field inspections against industry standards during construction of Providence Hospital on Quezon Avenue
The expanding half of the automation toolkit, data workflows and pipelines beyond what a workbook can carry (CS50 background)
Credentials
Registered Electrical Engineer, professional licensure following the BSc (see Education & early career)
Revit certificates: MEP Families · Fire-Alarm Systems Design · Essential Training for Architecture
Construction Management Foundations
Languages
Filipino (native) and English (full professional proficiency) carry the day-to-day. My French is still officially elementary, enough to get through a fixture catalogue but not a negotiation.
The softer set
Team leadership, presentations and technical communication, public speaking, and a standing habit of continuous learning in controls, automation, and programming. In coordination-heavy work, explaining a technical position clearly, whether to a contractor, a consultant, or a client who just wants the room to look right, is a skill like any other.
BSc in Electrical Engineering (ABET-accredited program), Technological Institute of the Philippines, 2009 – 2015. Details, including the 2 MVA distribution-system design project and student activities, are under Education & early career.
A note on the PDF
The downloadable CV is the public edition, last exported August 2025. It predates the January 2026 team-lead promotion, so treat this page as the current record. Some client and commercial details are generalized; if you need specifics for a hiring or partnership conversation, get in touch and I'll walk you through the full picture.
Email is the fastest way to reach me. Whether it's a project inquiry, a technical question about lighting controls, or a conversation about working together, I read everything that lands at the address on the right.
What I'm useful for
Architectural and façade lighting projects in the UAE and the wider region
Lighting control system design and troubleshooting across DALI, DMX, and hybrid systems
Design support: submittals, value engineering, photometric evaluation
Process and tooling questions. If your engineering team is drowning in spreadsheets, I've probably automated that exact spreadsheet
Archie Apa