Don't worry about it. This is supposed to be the place where you can ask "dumb" questions, among friends. This trade is so varied from job to job that there are no dumb questions, only questions about parts of the job we don't see every day.
I have said some dumb things here and been corrected. It was just part of the learning experience. In the volatile job market we are in it is wise to know a little about a lot of things you never thought you would ever need to know. Knowlege is power.
You also have energy laws and new products coming on the scene that make a lot of old "rules of thumb" obsolete. That is particularly true of lighting. That 2va/sqft may actually be very generous in California.
The next generation of LED (or other solid state lights) may make office space capable of being lighted with a fraction of a watt per foot.
