We provide Commissioning services to mitigate risk, ensure facility performance, prevent expensive breakdowns, maximize energy efficiency, and improve environmental health and occupant safety.
Commissioned buildings provide many measurable benefits: greater energy efficiency, reduced operational costs, fewer maintenance issues, and minimized risk for owners, design teams, and contractors.
Our Commissioning expertise is derived from an extensive history of delivering high performing, highly efficient buildings.
Our tailored approach to Commissioning is geared toward efficiency and sustainability, ensuring it will have a positive outcome for your facility operations and occupants. Our team of experienced engineers and technical professionals can help you reduce your risk, mitigate critical issues and deliver a cost-effective solution for the performance of your facilities.
As part of our integrated project delivery, our Commissioning, Re-commissioning and Retro-commissioning services include, but are not limited to:
Commissioning is a collaborative, quality-driven, systematic process that focuses on verifying and documenting that a building and all of its commissioned systems are planned, installed, inspected, tested, operated, and managed as designed.
Some of the main building systems involved in Commissioning include:
The primary goal of Commissioning is to ensure a building and all of its systems perform according to their design intent and meet the owner’s project requirements. This could include verifying the systems and components are working correctly with benchmarks in place, optimizing building performance, boosting efficiencies and lowering operations and maintenance costs. Commissioning is also used to prevent future problems and costs through proactive quality measures.
Commissioning should be looked upon as a holistic, integrative process that spans from pre-design/planning to occupancy and operations. It should also include ongoing commission functions after construction is finished.
Commissioning can produce significant cost savings in a new building project.
Cost savings are usually presented as a range, since actual savings vary, depending on building type, location and the scope of the commissioning process. A study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found the following cost savings ranges:
The Concord Group is a Certified Cx Firm (CCF) by the Building Cx Certification Board. The CCF represents the gold standard in commissioning certification for companies committed to delivering the highest quality to their customers and facilities.
INTEGRATION & OPTIMIZATION
At its core, Commissioning is the process of integrating all the disparate parts of a building into an integrated, functioning whole. It begins with assuring each component is installed and operating correctly, meeting the performance requirements of the design. Next is the coordination of the individual components into functional systems. After that comes the integration and optimization of the systems into a cohesive whole. The final element of the Commissioning process is the documentation of the completed building.
Project requirements are defined and we ensure they are measurable, documentable and verifiable. These are then built into a detailed Commissioning draft plan outlining the commissioning process, schedule and budget requirements.
We initiate focused design reviews for commission-ability and maintainability. We use our experience to understand how the systems will work together, how they will need to be operated and what methods work best. Feedback from the review is then shared with the design team and confirmed with the owner.
The Commissioning process requirements are identified in the bid documents. Details of the commissioning plan, commissioning specifications and methods, documentation and instrumentation requirements are provided to the sub-contractors/vendors to ensure they are fully aware of their obligations.
Commissioning workshops are held with design and construction teams to ensure they understand the Commissioning process. Drawings and technical submittals are reviewed and aspects that may compromise performance, efficient operation or maintenance are highlighted, and resolved.
We manage the Commissioning teams through regular scheduled meetings. Systems testing and commissioning results are progressively witnessed and verified by our commissioning professionals.
For environments designed to utilize critical systems, heat load tests and integrated systems tests (IST) are recommended prior to handover. For life safety systems, a cause and effect test will also be conducted. We document these tests and ensure all potential failure scenarios are successfully simulated.
We provide a support role for the incoming facility management team regarding the operation of the building systems. With an intimate knowledge of the systems installation, Commissioning and performance testing, we provide advice as to the correct operation and tuning of the user.
Continuous Commissioning is an ongoing process to resolve operational problems, improve comfort, optimize energy use and identify retrofits. We observe system operations and usage, conduct interviews and provide recommendations for functional adjustments to ease operation, maintain optimum O&M costs and boost efficiencies.
Optimize building performance