Question: There’s a lot of talk about building commissioning these days. Can you give us an overview? Is building commissioning for real or the latest “smoke and mirrors”?

Answer: When it comes to building commissioning, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, without any mirrors. While formalized building commissioning only emerged in 1981 when the Disney Company commissioned the Epcot Center, it’s becoming a mainstream practice. ASHRAE Guideline 0, The Commissioning Process, defines commissioning as “a quality-oriented process for achieving, verifying, and documenting that the performance of facilities, systems, and assemblies meets defined objectives and criteria.”

So, practically speaking, what’s that mean for facilities engineers and building owners? Building commissioning ensures components and systems are working efficiently and in a coordinated way. The result? A building operating to its design specification, while optimizing operational costs, minimizes energy consumption and enhances occupant comfort and safety. Additionally, a well executed commissioning project will ensure that the facilities staff is adequately trained in the operations and maintenance of today’s increasingly intricate building systems and will deliver thorough systems documentation. This is particularly critical for complex clean manufacturing and laboratory environments.

Building commissioning is also applied to existing buildings, not just new construction. Existing buildings may be commissioned to optimize functionality by identifying cost-effective adjustments to the building’s existing systems—a process called retro-commissioning. Buildings that had been previously commissioned are sometimes re-commissioned, generally to adjust for changes such as new additions or interior layouts, or to review, adjust, and update equipment and systems as they age. Building commissioning is a fundamental process to ensure operational efficiency and, in the larger context, to reduce a building’s carbon footprint.

In all cases, it’s important to involve the commissioning agent at the start of a project. Too many facilities managers mistakenly think commissioning focuses on testing at the completion of construction. To optimize the benefits of commissioning, including cost-avoidance during systems selection, it’s important to have a commissioning agent as an integral part of your team from the beginning. The expertise they bring throughout the process—in the planning, delivery, and operations of optimized buildings—is invaluable.