Building Commissioning Attributes

April 2005 Edition

View April 1999 Edition

The Building Commissioning Association (BCA) promotes building commissioning practices that maintain high professional standards in accordance with the Owner's Project Requirements. To help achieve this, the BCA identifies two important categories of commissioning practices:

Believing that diverse and creative approaches to commissioning benefit the commissioning profession and its clients, the BCA focuses on identifying critical commissioning attributes and components, rather than attempting to dictate a rigid commissioning process. Because the scope of commissioning varies between projects, the BCA defines the basic purpose of commissioning as follows, in order to clarify context for these Essential Attributes and Valuable Elements.

Purpose of Building Commissioning

It is the BCA's premise that, "The basic purpose of building commissioning is to provide a quality based process with documented confirmation that building systems are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated and maintained in compliance with the Owner's Project Requirements (OPR). Commissioning of existing systems may require the development of new functional criteria in order to address the owner's current systems performance requirements."

Essential Attributes of Building Commissioning

The BCA considers the following attributes to be so fundamental to effective building commissioning that all members agree in writing to adhere to them whenever they serve as a project’s Commissioning Authority:

  1. The Commissioning Authority (CA) leads the commissioning process and makes the final recommendations to the owner regarding functional performance of the commissioned building systems.
  2. The CA is an objective, independent advocate of the owner who leads, plans, schedules and coordinates the commissioning team. If the CA’s firm has other project responsibilities, or is not under direct contract to the owner, a conflict of interest exists. Wherever this occurs, the CA discloses, in writing, the nature of the conflict and the means by which the conflict shall be managed.
  3. The CA shall develop and define the Owner’s Project Requirements which includes information to properly plan, design, construct, operate and maintain the systems.
  4. In addition to having good written and verbal communication skills, the CA has current engineering knowledge and extensive and recent hands-on field experience regarding:
    1. Building systems commissioning,
    2. The physical principles of building systems performance and interaction,
    3. Building systems start-up, balancing, testing and troubleshooting,
    4. Operation and maintenance procedures, and
    5. The building design and construction process.
  5. For each project, the commissioning purpose and scope are clearly defined in the CA contract.
  6. The CA recommends the commissioning roles and scope for all members of the design and construction teams that are clearly defined in:
    1. Each design consultant’s contract,
    2. The construction manager’s contract,
    3. General Conditions of the Specifications,
    4. Each division of the specifications that cover work to be commissioned, and
    5. The specifications for each system and component for which the suppliers’ support is required.
  7. Each project is commissioned in accordance with a written Commissioning Plan, which identifies the process and procedures for the Commissioning Process, and addresses the Owner’s Project Requirements, the defined commissioning scope and budget. The commissioning plan:
    1. Provides a general description of the Commissioning Process activities including the systems to be commissioned,
    2. Is updated during the life of the project,
    3. Defines the scope of the commissioning process,
    4. Defines commissioning roles and responsibilities of the Commissioning Team,
    5. Documents the communication channels used throughout the project,
    6. Provides a schedule of activities including milestones,
    7. Provide verification procedures, and
    8. Provides quality based sampling procedures.
  8. The CA reviews submittals, shop drawings, systems, assemblies and installation for commissioning-related issues to achieve the Owner’s Project Requirements throughout the project. The CA uses site visits to verify that the installed systems and procedures comply with the Owner’s Project Requirements.
  9. The CA will develop test verification procedures that define the means and methods for system and assembly verification to achieve the Owner’s Project Requirements.
  10. All commissioning activities and findings are documented as they occur. The Test Records shall indicate whether the observed results meet the expected results. These reports are distributed as they are generated, and are included in the final report.
  11. The Test Procedure program objectively verifies that the building systems perform interactively in accordance with the Owner’s Project Requirements. Written, repeatable test procedures, prepared specifically for each project, are used to functionally test components and systems in all modes of operating conditions specified for testing. These tests are documented to clearly describe the individual systematic test procedures, the expected systems’ response or acceptance criteria for each procedure, the actual response or findings, and any pertinent discussion.
  12. The commissioning authority provides constructive input for the resolution of system deficiencies or performance issues that are not in compliance with the Owner’s Project Requirements.
  13. Every commissioning project is documented with a Commissioning Process Progress Report that contains periodic status reports of the Commissioning Process and become a part of the Commissioning Process Record. The Commissioning Process Record includes:
    1. An evaluation of the operating condition of the systems at the time of test completion,
    2. Construction Checklist completion verification and summary results from the Issues Log (including the descriptions of issues and the measures that were taken to correct them and the uncorrected operational deficiencies that were accepted by the owner),
    3. Test Procedures and data,
    4. Commissioning Process Progress Reports,
    5. Deferred tests, the pre-requisite conditions and the estimated schedule for the tests,
    6. Lessons learned,
    7. Continuous Commissioning Process Plan, and
    8. Recommissioning Process Plan.

Valuable Elements of Building Commissioning

Building commissioning is of greatest value to the owner when it provides, throughout the many phases of design and construction, a means of continuously communicating their building systems criteria and rigorously verifying compliance with these criteria. In order to accomplish this, the BCA recommends that the building commissioning scope include the following elements:

  1. Prior to design, assist the owner in evaluating the facility’s requirements regarding such issues as energy conservation, indoor environment, staff training, and operation and maintenance.
  2. Review all phases of design and construction documents for:
    1. Compliance with design criteria,
    2. Commissioning requirements,
    3. Bidding issues,
    4. Construction coordination and installation concerns,
    5. Performance aspects, and
    6. Facilitation of Operations & Maintenance, including training and documentation.
  3. Review the equipment submittals for compliance with commissioning issues.
  4. Verify or manage the scheduling and procedures used for system start-up.
  5. Verify that the training for the owner’s operating staff is conducted in accordance with the project documents.
  6. Verify that the Operations & Maintenance manuals comply with the contract documents.
  7. Prior to expiration of the construction contract warranty, assist the owner in assessing systems’ performance and addressing related issues.

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