Life at Schréder: Jean-Paul Ojeil
Companies are defined by the people who work for them: for over a century, Schréder has been at the forefront of sustainable lighting thanks to the innovative thinking of its employees worldwide. This series focuses on the people who make Schréder what it is, discussing their career path, landmark projects and thoughts on what comes next for the lighting industry.
Schréder is a market leader across North America, lighting tunnels, highways and sports grounds across the continent. From the tunnels under the Saint Lawrence river to lighting snow sheds in the Rocky Mountains, our teams have provided safe, attractive lighting solutions across Canada.
Jean-Paul Ojeil has been at Schréder since 2017 and is the Head of the photometry department at Schréder North America. An expert in calculating the right lighting for road, sports, tunnels and area lighting, he works onsite as well as teaching the next generation of engineers the science of photometry. Having lit more than 250 sports fields and dozens of tunnels and airports, his enthusiasm for great lighting shines through.
I didn’t start out in lighting…
I was born in Lebanon, but my family fled to Canada when I was nine because of the civil war. I think of it as coming from darkness into light, we didn't have electricity most of the time because of the war. In Canada I studied Health Science and ended up with a degree in telecommunications. I joined a lighting laboratory because they needed a secure network to comply with ISO17025 certification, but I was fascinated by all the machinery they had to test lights.
I’ve always been a curious person…
I've loved lighting since I was young – I can still picture the view after dark on the Corniche, the seafront promenade in Beirut. So I started asking questions, and questions, and more questions and I ended up working in the laboratory, going on to become the quality assurance manager. We did photometric tests, electrical tests, colourimetric tests, everything. We used Schréder lights to calibrate the machines, so I soon realised that they were extremely high quality. I once got a bad electric shock from one of them, so I sometimes say that the Schréder brand is close to my heart... it's actually scarred there!
I joined Schréder in 2017…
There were a lot of changes in the industry at that time, and I knew a lot of the team at Schréder from working with them. Most importantly, they offered me the opportunity to work with photometry, lighting calculations and the kind of work I'm passionate about.
I work in the laboratory, but also in the field…
I was hired as a Field Application Engineer, so I do a lot of calculations and studies, but because of my knowledge from the lighting laboratory, I often go where the contractor is to check that the lighting is being installed correctly and to troubleshoot if necessary. And it is necessary! A while back, we provided the lighting for an airport in Texas – we installed OMNISTAR to give the ground crews great visibility. But I got a call that it wasn’t bright enough, so I flew down to investigate. It turned out they'd tilted it during installation and it was lighting the roof, not the tarmac!
Dedicated to optimising the lighting at airports, Jean-Paul regularly goes on-site to make sure the lighting levels are correct (pictured at Halifax Airport).
I love lighting airports…
In January I’ll start a new role as the new Vice chairman of IES RP37, which is the committee for airport lighting standards in North America. And we’ll also start work on lighting Calgary Airport, one of the largest in Canada; we already lit Toronto Pearson, the largest in the country.
We do a lot of conferences and training…
We go to engineering firms and present our products, not from a sales perspective, but to teach the young engineers about photometry and lighting, to give them the big picture. We are a lighting company, but we want to save energy. We want to save the planet, we want to reduce power consumption and we want to reduce blue light levels. North America has a lot to learn from Europe about environmental protection in lighting: we want to share our philosophy with the next generation.
We also have some major tunneling projects…
The Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine tunnel is the largest underwater tunnel in Canada, it's 1.5 kilometres long, and we're working on the lighting for that right now. We also did the Ville-Marie tunnel, which is 10 kilometres long. When we were working on that, there was a problem with the drivers and some of the components, the lumgates; we reinstalled them all in three days. It was a miracle on the island of the Virgin Mary! The Ministry of Transport was happy because we were responsive, we were proactive and we fixed it. We keep our word.
On site at the Ville-Marie tunnel, assisting with commissioning.
I like a challenge…
We’re working on lighting a sports arena at Long Island University. It’s in the heart of New York in Brooklyn. There’s a building right next to the field, so we can’t install poles. So a colleague and I had an idea, why we don't flip the pole and we hang them. Under the soffit of the building, hanging down from the roof. So before construction, we specified the weight of the components, and they designed the soffits based on that. I like challenges. If it's too easy, I'm not interested!
I don’t have a favourite project…
They are all like my babies. I love to point them out to my actual kids - who are now teenagers - and say, look, it was our team who built that. This is the thing about building: one day we will leave this earth, but our projects will stay, they’re a memory of us. I was born in the North of Lebanon, near Baalbek. People still speculate about who built it, and how… building is an act of remembrance and maybe one day my children will pass through these parks and squares and say, look, my dad built that.
But I did love working on one in particular…
We lit the snow sheds on the highway near Hope, BC. It was so beautiful. We stayed there for three weeks, it was like heaven. It's up in the Rockies and it's where the gold rush started in the 1800s, so there's so much history about how they got gold out of the Fraser River. It's also where they filmed Rambo: First Blood. Just an incredible place.
Schréder has a real family spirit…
I always feel I can easily reach the person I want to reach, we can always ask questions, make connections. It's given me the opportunity to have the career I have now. Sometimes I work 60 hours a week, but I enjoy it because I see the results of my work. My managers are happy, there's an atmosphere of trust and we all work together.
Jean-Paul is passionate about helping people understand how lighting works.
My dream is to illuminate Lebanon one day…
The situation seems to be calming down again and my dream would be to help rebuild the country. Schréder used to have a company there; who knows what could happen in the future! The Corniche, the motorways, Beirut airport - it would be incredible to be part of restoring them to their former glory.
But I couldn’t move from Canada…
I’m very settled here. I have a supportive wife in my life, whose patience and love have helped shape my career into what it is today. My family is equally supportive and with our two children, we see our extended family a lot – my brothers, sisters, cousins… after church we’ll all have lunch together, organise a big barbecue, that kind of thing. We also have two dogs, Shadow, a very elegant poodle, and Stella who is more like a T-Rex in the body of a German shorthaired pointer. Then there’s the nature - I love hunting, fishing and taking walks in nature. Nothing compares to the landscape of Northern Quebec in the Fall!
Connect with Jean-Paul on LinkedIn.