The investments require to retool for producing hard metric fixtures simply would not be justified on the basis of federal building construction alone, resulting in higher unit of cost for fixtures required under the federal guidelines. We estimate that, depending on the type of fixture requested in a procurement bid, the additional cost per fixture will run from 12 to 20 percent. GSA has argued that industry-wide adoption of a hard metric standard will make the lighting fixture industry more competitive internationally. A harmonized standard dimension does not exist world-wide and it is not moving toward a 600x1200 mm configuration. U.S. lighting fixtures exports are practically nonexistent due to the expensive transportation costs involved in shipping.
Lighting fixtures are large and bulky, yet light, making transportation costs prohibitively high.
Accordingly, most lighting fixtures are produced near to the customer in markets around the world to reduce cost and meet local requirements. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.