Common questions about the mechanical, electrical, power generation and digital construction work LCE does. For anything not covered here, call +27 (0)87 805 9452 or email office@lceng.co.za.
Mechanical services
What does mechanical building services cover?
Air conditioning and ventilation, wet services such as hot and cold water and drainage, fire protection, and specialist systems like medical gas in hospitals. It is the mechanical side of what makes a building usable once the structure is up.
At what stage should a mechanical engineer be appointed?
As early as concept design. Plant rooms, risers and ceiling voids all take up space, and that space is far cheaper to allow for on a drawing than to find later. Late appointment is the most common reason a project ends up with plant in an awkward place.
Do you supply and install the equipment?
No. LCE designs the system and writes the specification, and a contractor prices and installs it. Keeping design separate from supply is what lets the specification be written around the building rather than around a product range.
Electrical services
What does electrical building services cover?
Power distribution from the incoming supply through to the socket: medium and low voltage reticulation, switchgear, distribution boards, lighting and emergency lighting. It also covers the systems that run over cable rather than power it, such as fire detection, access control, CCTV and data.
Why does a building need lightning protection?
A strike does not have to hit the building to cause damage. It induces surges in cabling that destroy connected equipment, so protection is designed as a system: a path to earth for the strike itself, plus surge protection for everything inside. A risk assessment establishes what level of protection the building actually needs.
What is arc flash analysis?
A study of what happens if a fault causes an arc inside switchgear, and how much energy someone standing in front of it would be exposed to. The result determines the protective equipment electricians must wear and the labels that go on the panel.
Power generation
What are the options for backup power?
Generators, uninterruptible power supplies, and solar with battery storage, usually in combination. A UPS carries the load through the seconds before a generator picks up, which is why critical equipment normally sits behind both.
Generator or battery storage?
They solve different problems. A generator will run as long as it has fuel, which suits long outages. Batteries respond instantly, need no fuel delivery and make sense where outages are short or where solar is already being installed. Which one leads depends on how long the supply is out and what has to stay running.
What is BESS?
Battery Energy Storage Solutions: batteries sized to run part or all of a building. Beyond backup, they let a site store cheap or solar-generated power and use it at expensive times, which is often what makes the numbers work.
Digital construction
What is BIM and why does it matter on a project?
Building Information Modelling means designing in a 3D model that carries real information about every component, not just lines on a drawing. Its practical value is coordination: a duct and a beam that occupy the same space show up as a clash in the model instead of as a problem on site.
What is augmented reality model review used for?
Holding a tablet up on site and seeing the design overlaid on what is actually built. It is useful for checking installed work against the model and for showing a client what a space will look like before it exists. LCE is the sole South African agent for AUGmentecture, which does this from Revit models.
What is 3D scanning used for?
Capturing an existing building or plant room accurately enough to design against. On refurbishment work the record drawings are often decades old or missing, and a scan replaces guesswork with measured reality.
Technical notes
Longer, referenced notes on the two subjects that come up most often. Both cite the governing clause and page for every figure.
- Operating theatre ventilation design in South Africa — the SANS 10400-O:2025 outdoor air rate, the 10 to 15 Pa pressure cascade, unidirectional airflow velocity and the gazetted comfort band, with worked examples on a 42 m² theatre.
- Medical gas plant and reticulation design for South African hospitals — the regulated outlet provisions, and why a diversified flow calculation rather than an outlet count sizes the source plant.