Commissioning your building can save you money. You know this because some facilities guru is always going on about how your building project isn’t complete if it isn’t commissioned.
True commissioning (per the guru) begins at the design phase. By all means, if you have a project in the design phase, bring in a commissioning consultant. You will almost certainly recoup the expense. But you’re not in the design phase—or rather, 85 percent of you gentle readers are not.
If your building is a green building, then most likely it’s been commissioned. Commissioning is an easy way to score a few LEED points. It has become integrally linked to green building practices, and rightly so. You can significantly reduce fuel consumption, and thus diminish your carbon footprint. Commissioning has this goal in common with green buildings. But green building and commissioning are also linked in how they are perceived in the industry. They are seen less as the latest trends and increasingly as best practices. Indeed, at the core, green practices are best practices, and commissioning is the process of ensuring best practices.
In green building, the equation is simple. Reduced waste equals reduced materials costs and reduced disposal costs. Less energy consumption costs less money. Using native building materials reduces shipping costs. And so on. The commissioning equation is even simpler: greater efficiency equals less waste equals lower costs.
Bear with me for just a bit more math. Green buildings have a perceived increased value. Realizing that value in a real estate deal may or may not happen. In a building that has been commissioned, you can provide actual data that shows real-world energy consumption rates that are up to 20 percent less than the individual system specifications. Citing performance data rather than design specs is a palpable bargaining chip.
So, we’ve established that commissioning is great, but we still don’t know what it is, exactly. We’ll start with the purpose, which is to reduce energy consumption, improve IAQ, improve temperature and humidity control, and optimize air and water distribution. Basically, to make your building hum. In order to do that, commissioning must begin and end with knowledge, which brings us to step 1 in the commissioning process.
Step 1: Build a library. The first step in commissioning is to collect manufacturers’ O&M manuals for all equipment and systems. Organize these manuals in a technical library that is available to the maintenance department. The library should also contain standard operating procedures, safety procedures, and information needed to develop a preventive maintenance program. It should be used to build and store history files for building equipment and systems. At a minimum, the library should include:
- drawings
- O&M manuals
- standard operating procedures
- test reports
- maintenance history including information on lubricants, fuels, filters, and other operating consumables
- emergency procedures
- documentation of occupant needs and requests
- contractor list (include contact information for emergency service)
- warranty documentation including certificates, vendor letters, and service contracts whether proposed or signed
- a complete list of recommended spare parts, suppliers, and whether they are kept on site
Your technical library should use a code with a unique identifier for each piece of equipment. By doing this, you’ll be able to trace equipment history from specs and drawings, to maintenance, to testing and performance.
As a side note, even though all manuals are kept in the technical library, a copy should be available where any equipment is located.
This is the first step in the commissioning process. Obviously, commissioning is not a one-step process. In fact, even calling it the most important step would go against the holistic approach of commissioning, where each step is vital. It is, however, the easiest step to skip or to compromise on, which can prevent commissioning from being truly successful. A disciplined approach to building and maintaining the technical library will ensure that your commissioning efforts are documented and that your successes are measured and reported.
The other steps are inspecting the building and its systems, testing the performance of equipment and systems, and training staff.
Inspections can ensure that systems are installed properly. At one site, complaints about improper heating had been addressed for years by adjusting the thermostat. An inspection finally revealed that the HVAC system hadn’t been fully unpackaged. Removing the plastic packaging material resolved the problem and reduced energy consumption.
Testing systems provides you with the information you need to communicate your successes. More importantly, it provides analytical data to help you locate problems before they become critical issues.
Training ensures that your maintenance staff knows how to keep systems optimized.
For all three of these steps, the technical library is the critical component to guide your commissioning efforts.
This article is based on BOMI’s new and updated coursebook, Design, Operation, and Maintenance of Building Systems, Part 1.. For more information, call 1-800-235-BOMI (2664) or visit BOMI’s website at www.bomi.org.