General background

Due to competitive pressures, facility owners look for low cost and abbreviated schedules to bring a facility from concept to operation. These competitive driving forces are reflected in the facility designers’ and contractors’ prices. To be price competitive, commissioning is often given cursory attention or not included altogether. While owners may be hesitant to delay facility opening, the cost and time invested in proper commissioning produce returns in a number of avenues including cost and energy savings, quality of system operation and more accurate realization of the goals of the project.

1. Complex building systems. Building systems continue to become more Because of this complexity, an ever-increasing emphasis must be placed on design, installation and operation error evasion. A commissioning effort will reduce these errors. When systems do not operate correctly, the cost of operation and maintenance increases. The savings which were supposed to be achieved because of the high technical nature of the new equipment and building system components is never realized. The need for commissioning becomes apparent after the owner takes possession of the facility. Tenant complaints, contractor call-backs and, in extreme cases, litigation results in additional costs to resolve inadequate operation of non-commissioned systems.
2. Commissioning today. Commissioning today is continually evolving. Depending on the size of the facilities, the sophistication of their systems, their location, the needs of their tenants and the design intent of the owner, commissioning can be applied in varying degrees to reduce problems and costs for all parties by providing a means to methodically achieve proper system operation.