John Woodnutt, a well-known figure within the lighting control market, has been awarded an MBE for services to Business and Entrepreneurship in the 2023 New Year Honours list.
Woodnutt is notable thanks to his many pioneering technologies, as well as the legacy he created by founding Delmatic Lighting Control in 1959. This helped commercialise lighting control technologies, with many of the innovations pioneered by Woodnutt now almost ubiquitous, including daylight-linking and corridor-hold, plug-in LCMs (lighting control modules), presence detectors, and adaptive load shedding.
The recognition for Woodnutt is the culmination of more than six decades of commitment to creating smart, energy-efficient building technologies. The products and concepts he helped develop in the 1950s paved the way for rapid implementation of energy efficient controls during the energy crises of the 1970s and sowed the seed for the global sustainable and smart buildings sector we see today.
Under his leadership, Delmatic continues to innovate cutting-edge solutions for the latest smart buildings, merging wired and wireless DALI-2 devices across integrated IoT and converged IP networks and optimising efficiency through sharing of granular data via MQTT.
The first commercial application of lighting controls in the early 1960s provided individual programmable control of every light within a 40 storey London headquarters building — fully flexible control that was available more than 60 years ago. Since then, Delmatic has equipped some of London’s most iconic buildings and projects including the NatWest Tower (Tower 42), the Gherkin, the Shard, Battersea Power Station and Crossrail Elizabeth Line.
In 2023, at the age of 96, John Woodnutt is still actively involved in his company’s work and in the continued advancement, development and application of cutting-edge technologies to enhance sustainability, save energy, and meet the pressing demands for reductions in greenhouse gases and carbon footprints.
His company’s achievements even led to an Electrical Review & Data Centre Review Excellence Award for the Lighting Product of the Year in 2022, which it received for the DALI-2 SpaceApp Microsensor.
On receiving the MBE, John Woodnutt noted, “I am delighted and honoured to receive this MBE. I share this recognition with my many colleagues – both within Delmatic and the wider industry sector – with whom I have worked over more than sixty years and, without whom, we could not have achieved all that we have achieved.”