07/06/2026
A sign that's hard to read in certain lighting conditions isn't really a sign. It's infrastructure that looks compliant but isn't doing the job it was installed to do.
That's the situation Essential Energy were dealing with. Engraved signage across their substation network had a colour contrast problem. Not obvious in all conditions, but in the environments where it mattered most, the legibility wasn't there. For critical infrastructure, that moves quickly from an aesthetic issue to a safety one.
We could have just told them we had a better solution. Most suppliers would. Instead we provided samples of our painted signage and let them test it themselves, in their own facility, against their own quality control standards.
That step is worth more than it might seem. When a company like Essential Energy is specifying signage across a network of substations throughout New South Wales, they need to be certain about what they're rolling out. Not because a supplier said it was good. Because they proved it themselves.
They tested it, they were satisfied, and they moved to the new process. That's the outcome we were after, but more importantly it's the kind of decision that sticks. When the customer has done their own testing, there's no doubt on their end.
That's generally how we prefer to work. Give people the information and the evidence, and let them make the call.
