UP CLOSE WITH
FRANK AGRAZ By Shirley Coyle
Freshly graduated out of “Industrial Distribution”, a Texas A&M program that is part engineering, part MBA, Frank Agraz was faced with a choice of job offers from three companies. One was a bearings distributor, another was a paper company (think Dunder Mifflin), and the other was a lighting maintenance company. Agraz recalls weighing his options at the time and thinking that “light bulbs are always going to burn out and someone’s going to need them” – choosing a path that brought him into both the existing building retrofit world and the lighting community. The lighting maintenance business was then in a period of transformation. The introduction of T8 fluorescent lamp technology created opportunities to expand from simply maintaining customers’ lighting systems with the same old lamps to instead providing an upgraded lighting solution along with
To sell it, you had to know it” ― Frank Agraz
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a multi-year maintenance contract – becoming higher value partners as lighting management companies instead of lighting maintenance companies. “To sell it, you had to know it”, says Agraz of lighting technology, and he immersed himself in his lighting education, attending every LightFair since 1993, joining and participating in NALMCO (iNternational Association of Lighting Management COmpanies) and the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society). His contributions over a dozen years on the content of certification exams through the NCQLP, which oversees the LC (Lighting Certified) credential, provided an opportunity to bring crucial lighting management content into the exam, as well as to gain an education in all the needs of the other roles in lighting – architect, electrical engineer, contractor, and others. A positive trend noted by Agraz is the expansion of technical and professional certifications by NALMCO – for example, Certified Lighting Controls Professional for those working in advanced lighting controls. Agraz faced one of his biggest challenges in starting his own lighting management company, just ahead of the 2008 economic crisis, with another colleague. Through those challenging times they found a path to thrive in the transition to LED, eventually selling the business in 2017 to OSRAM. Now with Eco Engineering, Inc., Agraz is Director, C&I Engineering. He leads a team of auditors and lighting developers