Bruce Pitts, BCxA Member Emeritus, is the BCxA’s official representative to ASHRAE. He summarizes the efforts of SSPC 300 (ASHRAE Standing Standard Project Committee 300: Commissioning oversight committee, plus subcommittees) at the Winter Meeting in Orlando last month, where the committees continued their work on updating the Standards and Guidelines. For example, ASHRAE Standards such as Standard 202 are ANSI-approved and are written in a way that can be referenced in building codes. Guidelines, on the other hand, are more detailed and provide deeper guidance on how to apply the process. Here is a summary of the actions that took place at the Winter Meeting with regard to new and existing committees and the announcement of publishing the BCxA Ongoing Cx Best Practices:

New Committees:

  • Standard 230 Commissioning Process for Existing Buildings; the committee has been working for the last few months to create the bulk of the new Standard that will be moved toward public review after the June 2020 meeting. The current Guideline 0.2, below, will be updated in coordination with Standard 230.
  • Guideline 1.6 Commissioning of Data Centers: The committee continuing work on creating and new guideline focused on the processes specific to Data Centers.  If you are an ASHRAE Member and your practice does data center commissioning, you may want to apply to join this committee and help create the guideline.

Existing Committees:

  • Standard 202 Commissioning Process of New Buildings and Systems is under continuous maintenance and is working to update the standard to conform with changes in the scope with the upcoming publication of Standard 230 for Existing Buildings.
  • Guideline 0.2 Commissioning Process for Existing Systems and Assemblies: Guideline 0.2 is under continuous maintenance and will be updated in coordination with the publication of Standard 230, above. It will include more detail on the application of commissioning of Existing Buildings. BCxA members of this ASHRAE committee are also participating in the current effort to update the BCxA Existing Building Commissioning Best Practices.
  • Guideline O The Commissioning Process, is being changed to conform with the publication of Standard 202 and to build more detail into the guideline. The Guideline is under continuous maintenance and will include more detail on the application of commissioning of New Buildings.  The update to Guideline O is being voted on to release for public review in March 2020.

BCxA Members are well represented on all of the ASHRAE commissioning committees. We work to influence these Standards and Guidelines to be consistent with all of the BCxA’s Best Practices, Webinars, TechTalks and Training.  Our long history of involvement positions the BCxA to influence commissioning best practices across the building industry and contributes to successful integration and updates for both associations’ publications.

It was announced at all the committee meetings that BCxA is publishing our Ongoing Commission (OCx) Best Practice in March of 2020.  This garnered a lot of discussion of how ASHRAE 300 will include Ongoing Commissioning in the current Standards and Guidelines.  Currently Ongoing Commissioning is referenced in Standard 202 and will be referenced in the upcoming Standard 230.