Consulting-Specifying Engineer - May 2008 - (Page 49) Commissioning critical facilities Deciding early on scope, process is critical to success, costs. BY PATRICK A. PRENDERGAST, PE, JAMES A. WHORTON, PE, AND JOHN D. RILEY, PE, George Butler Associates, Inc. ritical facilities, such as hospitals, laboratories, and data centers have demanding operational requirements that merit much more rigorous commissioning (Cx) efforts than most other buildings. Not only does this drive up Cx costs, but also the Cx benefits. In the broader view of building Cx, there are two main components: the process used to commission the facility and the personnel executing the Cx tasks. The quality of both of these components must be on par with the sophistication of the systems and operations and maintenance requirements of critical facilities. Commissioning process The basic outline of the Cx process is generally agreed upon within the industry, such as embodied in ASHRAE Guideline 0-2005, “The Commissioning Process,” including the involvement of the commissioning authority (CxA) beginning in the pre-design phase, to capture the C owner’s project requirements, through the end of first 12 months of occupancy to enable four seasons of tuning. Sticking to this cradle-of-design to cradle-ofoperations definition for critical facilities is imperative. At the start, the building owner must determine the goals of the project lead- individuals used must be sufficient to ensure the tests are written and executed to prove performance of the systems. Depth and rigor The primary factor that determines the Cx approach and delineates Cx for critical facilities from conventional buildings is The commissioning team’s experience, integrity, and ability to communicate with the project team are critical. ing to a building’s construction or renovation, and contract an independent thirdparty Cx team with sufficient knowledge, experience, and resources to conduct the Cx. The owner and Cx team’s leader (the CxA) must then work together to ensure that the Cx process is sufficiently detailed to achieve these objectives. The Cx team’s experience, integrity, and ability to communicate with the project team are critical to the success of the project because the Cx team will be directing members of the project team to participate in the Cx process. Cx roles and responsibilities will be apportioned to the members of the project team, including: • Third-party CxA • Construction manager • Installing contractors • Owner/owner’s personnel • Design team personnel • Equipment suppliers. Regardless of the parties performing Cx, the experience and expertise of the the depth and rigor of the Cx process. All Cx activities should be considered, from those in the pre-design phase to those that are part of the occupancy and operations phase. To begin, determine the level of assurance necessary for your facility and then establish the level of effort to provide that assurance through the Cx process. This includes not only evaluating the depth of review and verification testing activities, but also which systems should be included. Depth and rigor of implementation are reflected in three primary areas: • Systems to be commissioned • Scope for testing components • Scope for testing systems alone and integrated. Regarding the systems, there are systems that “must” be commissioned and others that “can” be optionally commissioned. Systems that must be commissioned are those that are critical facility operations, including electrical Editor’s note This article is derived from a paper presented by the authors at the 16th National Conference on Building Commissioning (NCBC), April 21-24, 2008. NCBC is owned and managed by PECI. For the original paper, and others, visit www.peci .org/ncbc. ConsultingSpecifying Engineer is the media sponsor for NCBC. Consulting-Specifying Engineer • MAY 2008 49
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.