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Owners don't pay for active humidity control without having a good reason. That said, neglecting proper commissioning and hurrying startup can lead to special (and serious) problems including structural damage. [...]

This is a story about two new construction commissioning projects with similar challenges and as-yet unwritten endings. The first project is one in which the commissioning professional was engaged before [...]

The idea for this month's topic was hatched during a retro-commissioning project, but it offers lessons to be applied to new construction commissioning. In short, there is such a thing [...]

Much has been written about systems' readiness for functional performance testing at the end of construction, and pre-functional checklists have become common elements of the commissioning process. For more than [...]

As demonstrated with manual winterization requirements last month (Winterization and Commissioning, January 2019), systems manuals should include more than a regurgitation of the BAS as-built documents. Not everything in a [...]

I live in Minnesota, and this time of year is bone-chillingly cold, dark more than 15 hours a day, and a potential nightmare for new HVAC system operators. With the [...]

My elevator speech about commissioning boils the process down to documentation, testing, and training. Documentation is a constant throughout the commissioning process, theoretically starting with the owner's project requirements and [...]

Last month, this column presented monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) as a subset of ongoing commissioning of buildings that have previously been commissioned or retro-commissioned. The MBCx elements of ongoing commissioning involve [...]

I have been commissioning building systems for 30 years, and that is starting to feel like a very long time. One of the startling manifestations of that passage of time [...]

The terms 'deferred testing' and 'seasonal testing' are common throughout the building systems commissioning world. So common, in fact, that there is often very little discussion about what they mean [...]

Irealize that Engineered Systems readers are primarily interested in commissioning systems inside buildings; however, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has indefinitely tied commissioning of the buildings' exterior enclosure [...]

Although the commissioning professional will almost never influence a project's delivery method or the owner's contractual relationships with the contractors, the project delivery method and contract relationships greatly influence the [...]

What happens when there is a design change (change order) in the middle of functional performance testing? That late in the project, design changes are often a result of functional [...]

Last month, this column began exploring the following three fundamental options for when the commissioning professional prepares customized functional performance test procedures for a project. * During design * Immediately [...]

Last month, this column explored the best time to functionally test new systems. This month and next month, I want to back up and talk about the best time to [...]

When is the best time to functionally test new systems? Some of the common answers to that question are: 1. Do not test until a system is complete and ready [...]

I recently heard about a large new construction project where the commissioning process hit a snag because of apparently conflicting construction contract clauses. In one part of the contract, the [...]

Commissioning is far from being 'business as usual' in the design and construction world. I was reminded of this fact recently when a building owner expressed the expectation that the [...]

Last month, this column acknowledged the fact that some projects do not have written Owner's Project Requirements (OPR) documents for the commissioning professional to reference. An OPR is intended to [...]

The Owner's Project Requirements document (OPR) is a commissioning industry standard. It is the means by which the owner communicates expectations for a new construction or major renovation project. The [...]

Over the past two months, this column has focused on the building owner's role in obtaining meaningful and timely training on new equipment and systems installed as part of major [...]

Last month, this column addressed the sad fact that many building owners' O&M organizations either do not have the resources or lack the motivation to take advantage of the O&M [...]

In May's column, I detailed the benefits to the owner of defining and enforcing a standard VAV terminal unit control sequence. These benefits included the ability to automate performance monitoring [...]

Last month, this column addressed the fact that VAV terminal units are substantially more 'variable' than even their name implies. Not only does the air flowing through them vary, there [...]

If anyone has commissioned anything, it is very likely they have commissioned at least one VAV hot water reheat terminal unit. They are ubiquitous, they are commodities, and they are [...]

* I recently commissioned a project that involved replacing eighty 2-pipe, dual-temperature fan-coil units in a nearly 40-year-old high-rise condominium. This sounded like a pretty easy assignment. How hard could [...]

* In many buildings, there are isolated spaces with a continuous cooling load even when the buildings are unoccupied. These can be server rooms, communication closets, main distribution frame rooms, [...]

Don't just focus on the large equipment. Keep in mind the small systems and their variety of configurations. This month, I begin a few columns about technical commissioning issues. It [...]

The problem sometimes isn't getting what you paid for. It's getting what you didn't pay attention to. If someone is special enough to spend millions of dollars to have a [...]

Most people in the major design and construction business understand that commissioning is a process by which a building's systems are verified to function properly prior to acceptance by the [...]

Full-scale commissioning always starts in the design phase and includes at least one design review cycle. However, the concept of 'design review' is overly broad, and it is important for [...]

The commissioning professional is obligated to the owner who wants to make sure the systems function effectively and efficiently for the long term. There are a number of reasons a [...]

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a collaborative process that has been applied more and more frequently to building design and construction projects. Although it is implemented in slightly different ways [...]

Continuing last month's topic of commissioning action lists (a.k.a. master issues logs, a.k.a. corrective action lists), I would like to focus on the items in those documents that deal with [...]

Whether one calls it a commissioning action list, a master issues log, a deficiency list, a corrective action list, etc., every commissioning project includes a matrix of items needing attention [...]

Last month's column walked through the scenario of what might happen if the commissioning professional is not engaged until very late in the construction phase. This is a challenge on [...]

Late last year (November and December, 2015) this column addressed the situation where a third-party commissioning professional is not by with the building owner until the last few weeks of [...]

This month, I want to address an issue which is as old as building systems commissioning itself. It was one of the first challenges commissioning professionals endeavored to resolve in [...]

I recently ran into a project situation that got me thinking about a new criterion that owners may want to incorporate into their Owner's Project Requirements (OPR) prior to starting [...]

Last month's column introduced the rare but real possibility that a construction project may be so far behind schedule that not all systems can realistically be expected to be complete [...]

The commissioning industry standard is to start commissioning early in a project, preferably during project conceptualization but certainly no later than the design development phase. However, that does not mean [...]

A colleague and I met with a group of code officials to discuss new commissioning requirements in an updated energy code that recently went into effect. We were talking about [...]

I have been reminded recently that building systems commissioning, as it has evolved and been defined in the North American building industry over the past 25 years, is not universally [...]

At project demolition, do you recycle, reuse, or replace existing equipment? And who decides? A full-scale commissioning process, including LEED Enhanced Commissioning, includes confirming the complete and timely handover of [...]

Listening to and respecting the O&M staff--whether they are building owner employees or outsourced service contractors--is a retrocommissioning best practice. In many cases, it is a necessity for successful retrocommissioning. [...]

One of the most important construction phase commissioning activities is control submittal review and controls integration. This is the process of confirming that the proposed HVAC system controls are dear, [...]

Some people consider commissioning to be too much trouble and too much time to tack on to the end of a project. Of course, commissioning is not something that should [...]

This month, I am continuing my recent exploration of situations where building systems do not pass their commissioning functional performance tests at the end of construction. The obvious answer, of [...]

Last month's column (February 2015) addressed the potential situation where the design engineers specify a change to a system which has already passed its commissioning functional performance test. Although inconvenient [...]

The commissioning process is intended to follow a logical flow in a logical project delivery process. It assumes that the owner's project requirements (OPR) are translated into design documents, which [...]