Though many clients support the 25% benchmark to cut upfront costs, minimize contracts, and reduce the number of site visits and service hours, we need to shift our conversations towards commissioning 100% of a building’s systems. Since we trust our most communal spaces to not only function, but to protect and have a minimal environmental impact, the return on investment (ROI) becomes irrefutable: with 100% commissioning of all systems, clients are better equipped to quickly address issues relating to building maintenance, functionality, and performance that would otherwise remain unseen.
The Case for 100% Commissioning
After project LEED certifications grew in popularity during the early 2000s, professional commissioning services became a prerequisite for many projects in the A/E community. By 2009, I was able to recognize this growing market need, and co-launched SMMA’s Commissioning Group with Mark O’Brien, Chief Mechanical Engineer. In 2011, our team was chosen as one of a select group of firms to provide commissioning services to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). We continue to assist the MSBA in ensuring that our local schools are both energy efficient and sustainable, while recognizing that their early adoption of professional commissioning services set an industry standard for clients across the board.
Based on the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) guidelines and industry practices, the project contractor is responsible for fully constructing, testing, and ensuring a pre-determined level of quality systems. The selected Commissioning Authority then observes and tests their work to verify that it achieves the Owner’s Project Requirements. To benchmark this performance, the commissioner thoroughly examines the building’s centralized systems while randomly sampling 25% of the de-centralized and unitary systems, such as fan coil units and terminal devices. Testing only a fraction of these simple systems covers much of a building’s functionality and efficiency, but still heavily relies on the discretion of the commissioning team, over-generalization, and assumption.