Building commissioning can be described generally as a quality assurance that a construction and its technical patterns meet the requirements well-defined in the owner’s project desires (OPR) (Agustsson, 2010). The commissioning process is defined in more detail in the ASHRAE Guideline (2005) as:
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“A quality focused process for enhancing the delivery of a project. The process focuses upon verifying and documenting that the facility and all of its systems and assemblies are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated, and maintained to meet the owner’s Project Requirements”.
However, the National Conference on Building Commissioning report in 1993 defines building commissioning as:
“A systematic process of assuring that the building performs in accordance with the design intent and the owner’s operational needs”.
The general ideology behind the commissioning process has been around for decades and can be traced back to the early years of shipbuilding, where ships’ equipment and systems were tested in a controlled environment to verify they worked as intended before they were taken on actual journeys (Augutsson, 2010).
The idea that the usual quality assurance procedures require more development was derived mostly from the dissatisfaction of construction owners resulting from the fact that their constructions rarely fulfilled their initial requirements or operational essentials and the time it took to work out the errors were overlooked in the building procedure (Grodnzik, 2009). In this regard, one of the things that commissioning has over other quality assurance processes is that it forces discoveries of mistakes and problems to be revealed as early as possible under controlled conditions and at a time when massive negative consequences are least likely to occur.
Among the aforementioned countries, the one where commissioning is closest to becoming ordinary practice is the United States. Commissioning is not a new thought, nor is building commissioning. The first time commissioning was used in relation to constructions relatively similar to the practice today happened between 1977 and 1993. The first users and suppliers of construction commissioning were commonly from the public sector. In 1994, the U.S. government issued an executive order stating that all federal constructions undertake commissioning. From 1999, one of the main gains for commissioning is the presence of commissioning in Leadership in Energy and
39 Environmental Design (LEED), which has made commissioning compulsory for a construction to obtain LEED certification. Besides that, there have been evolvements with additional guidelines, energy standards, commissioning associations, and white papers have been made and published (Portland Energy Conservation, 2010).
The research results from the US and the evaluation of the two shopping malls in Denmark (Agustsson, 2010) point out that the use of building commissioning throughout the building process is likely to reach substantial reductions in energy consumption. However, companies offering building commissioning services still have difficulties convincing building owners about the value that commissioning adds to the built assets and the reduction in operations and maintenance costs. A potential solution to this is to improve data collection of commissioning projects and to analyse the collected data to establish certain facts regarding the positive outcomes that commissioning has achieved. The subsequent points further define what building commissioning involves (Heinz and Casault, 2004; California Commissioning Collaborative, 2006; Grondzik, 2009):
Enforces collaboration between members of the building process. Encourages and documents communications amongst owners, designers,
contractors, and operations and maintenance personnel.
Documents all difficulties that oppose the OPR and the solutions in a structural way.
A systematic quality assurance procedure that through investigation and verification ensures the building meets the OPR.
Ensures that operations and maintenance personnel are delivered with required training to be able to maintain the construction at the owner’s intended
performance level.
A process that emphases on result first, and then what equipment is used to achieve the result.
Berkely Lab (2010) provides an overview of the commissioning process that outlines the activities undertaken at each phase of the building project commissioning process. Figure 2.6 illustrates the key commissioning activities, the key documents produced in every stage of the construction project, the purpose, and the data that should be included at each phase.
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Figure 5: Commissioning process Overview. (Berkeley Lab, 2010).
The role of the Commissioning Authority (CxA) is to handle all of the communications required for the commissioning team to the owner, unless otherwise delegated to members of the commissioning team some of the direct communication activities (Agustsson, 2010). A Commissioning Authority (CxA) is a professional who is knowledgeable in the building, design, and operation of systems. It determines the responsibilities and objectives of the teams involved in the commissioning process, like the commissioning and design teams and produces documents, logs, reports and plans and update them, makes checks of systems and equipment, and trains operation and maintenance personnel (Agustsson, 2010). The CxA hold regular meetings with the different AEC players involved in the project delivery and operations and submit the documents produced according to specific deadlines and according to specific contractual commitments (Agustsson, 2010).
Finally, the CxA ensures the project is delivered on time, according to the budget, and that all that is built corresponds to the design (Agustsson, 2010). Equipment and system confirmation is still one of the most significant parts of the commissioning procedure due to the important focus on increasing efficiency of systems to achieve lower energy
41 consumption. How detailed the verification process can be varies from one project to another but a complete and comprehensive verification process should be carried out to verify the delivery, installation, and function of equipment and systems (Grodnzik, 2009).