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Why Building Commissioning Is Important

What Is Building Commissioning?

Building commissioning is the process of checking and verifying a building to ensure that its systems such as HVAC, running water, electricity and other systems are working efficiently and as originally designed. Building commissioning is an attempt to discover any performance issues a building may have and improve the building’s efficiency to guarantee an enhanced experienced for the residents of the building.

During commissioning, it is expected that a thorough and diligent check, examination, and verification is done to know if there are significant problems that should be remedied. It is a necessary procedure necessary for new construction or renovation. All the systems in the home or building are calibrated and operated together to deliver a seamless, dynamic, and efficient performance that the homeowner envisioned.

Commissioning is usually carried out before a building becomes occupied. From experience, buildings that are not commissioned typically cost about 20% more to run than adequately commissioned buildings. While it may seem unnecessary after hiring professional contractors, commissioning is crucial to your experience with the property in respect of health, safety, and cost. On the grand, commissioning is an indispensable aspect of any building projects or renovations.

Commissioning a building demands that the facility is assessed based on quality assurance procedure. Commissioning a new building for the start or retro-commissioning of an existing older building will help to reduce the need for maintenance and lower operating costs regarding water, energy, and waste.

What Is Retro-Commissioning?

Retro-commissioning is meant for buildings that were not adequately commissioned in the beginning. This is more or less a re-commissioning, although the building has been occupied and used for a longer time. Buildings that were not properly commissioned can benefit from retro-commissioning regarding cost savings and energy efficiency.

The Importance of Commissioning

The primary goal of commissioning is economic benefits through quality assurance process. Commissioning offers several benefits relative to initial costs of equipment and technology with the aim of realizing higher occupancy rates. The importance of commissioning will be examined in the following categories.

  1. Homeowners, Building Owners, and Facility Managers

It is crucial that homeowners and building owners and managers keep their property operating smoothly. However, smooth running of their facility does not guarantee their running efficiently or optimally. One may be tempted to say that everything is alright as long as temperatures are around the standard threshold. However, there could be wastages in the performance of the home’s HVAC, and no one would suspect.

Commissioning would find out the exact inefficiency and help in creating a solution to eliminate the waste. The importance of commissioning is brought to light by helping to identify the inefficiencies and problems for the homeowners and managers to invest in solutions. A commissioned building will run efficiently after the inefficiency has been reduced and also with a reduction in energy usage. As a result, homeowners and facility managers will be able to:

  1. Reduce the cost of utility
  2. Improve the functioning of the building system
  3. Enhance the operations and maintenance of the building
  4. Prolong the life cycle of equipment
  5. Improve the building’s documentation

With commissioning, building owners can reduce costs and facility managers can do their jobs better.

  1. Real Estate

The real estate market depends on the aesthetics of a building to attract investors and tenants. Although some features may attract people considering the exterior of a building, the investors or tenants would appreciate the comfort and low cost of maintenance better than the aesthetics.

For the real estate industry, commissioning is fundamental as both the occupants (tenants) and investors are concerned. For the tenants, commissioning identifies areas concerning the facility’s performance that can be enhanced to maintain a specific comfort level relevant to the satisfaction of the occupants of the home. In the same vein for investors, it is the occupant’s comfort that makes the building occupancy viable.

  1. Energy Efficiency

Commissioning helps to put a building on the path of energy efficiency without spending too much. The problem areas can be identified and corrected immediately without losing so much unnecessary maintenance and cost of running the home. As a result, spending on ensuring efficiency of HVAC and other systems pay back regarding costs that would have been spent running the facilities.

  1. Risk Management

Quality assurance is the hallmark of a building commissioning process. For homeowners, commissioning serves as a tool for detecting and managing the risks identified in the building. Risk management evaluates a product or service for potential sources of adverse impacts on performance and setting up procedures to reduce the possibility and severity of the effects. Commissioning helps to protect the returns of homeowners on the financial investment in the building.

We are an engineering firm that performs building commissioning (Cx) services. We test all of the mechanical systems when the building is complete, and prior to the new owners taking occupancy.  Our goal is to make sure that the building functions as intended or designed, and that the building is operating as efficiently as possible. We often find small and large items that are not working with the heating and cooling systems, and when not commissioned often go unnoticed until the building is occupied and it is not working.  We have found several instances where heating and cooling systems were either piped backward or incorrectly, which resulted in wasted energy and comfort issues. Several studies have shown that building commissioning services pay for itself many times over the life of the building.  Contact us today for a comprehensive building commissioning that will verify all your systems critically to ensure that you benefit from your investments maximally.