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6 Easy Tips for Completing Commissioning on Schedule

Commissioning is often compressed at the end of the project, lumped in with start-up, TAB and move-in. How do you avoid schedule compression? Well, it’s not always easy but we have found that the best way to get a team on schedule is to:

1. Promote the Pre-Requisites: Help them understand the pre-requisites required before Cx can start. This can range from things like power to the BMS panel, TAB being complete, programming being finished.
2. Set Priorities Together: Help the team prioritize. For example, if most of the HVAC equipment is in the basement – then ask the GC and the electrician to coordinate getting power to that part of the building first. If you do this right, you will likely improve team relationships. 
3. Sooner not Later: Help them understand that BMS control panels need power sooner, not later. If the panels are late getting power, then a lot of check-out and validation tasks get delayed. If you can’t get permanent power, ask for temporary power.
4. Program Ahead: Require the BMS contractor to prove that their programming is done ahead of time – versus they don’t start working on it until they show up for start-up and commissioning.
5. Program per SOO: Verify with the BMS contractor – ahead of time – that they are programming the job per the APPROVED control sequences of operation (SOO), versus ‘the programmer is doing it the way he always does.”
6. Phase the Cx: Try not to be overly insistent that EVERYthing is ready before the Cx guy shows up. Be willing to work in phases, particularly when a job is behind schedule. You’ll be seen as a team player, and will tend to get far better cooperation.

 

Commissioning domestic water: waterless faucets have MORE germs!

Hands-free faucets harbor germs, Johns Hopkins study says

LA TIMES: Hands-free electronic faucets can save a lot of water — and because you don’t have to touch them with your grubby fingers to turn them on, have widely been assumed to help fight the spread of germs, too.  

But a team at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore has discovered that at their facility, electronic faucets were more likely to be contaminated with Legionella bacteria than the old-fashioned manual type.  

So much more likely that the hospital actually ripped out the new-fangled plumbing in patient care areas, and elected to purchase traditional fixtures for new clinical buildings that are set to open in 2012.

“Newer is not necessarily better when it comes to infection control in hospitals,” said Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Maragakis, in a statement.  Maragakis was the senior investigator on the research.  

Initially, the team wasn’t seeking to compare traditional and automatic faucets. Rather, it planned to test new faucets to see how often they needed to be flushed out with the treated water hospitals use to combat waterborne bacterial infestations.  

MORE

 

Commissioning Report: Solar at Googleplex

Solar panels cover carport-like parking spaces.

Links to Commissioning Resources – courtesy of the National Institute of Building Sciences

Here’s some good building commissioning resources. CHECK IT OUT (scroll down)

“Whole Building Commissioning Process Manual” – Department of Veteran’s Affairs. Updated 2010

From the Manual – “Commissioning and acceptance testing is integral to the design and 

construction process, not additive.”

 

Download the Manual

 

 

The Certified Building Commissioning Firm (CBCF) Certification Program – NEW from AEE

Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) announces The Certified Building Commissioning Firm (CBCF) program. 

Objectives

To raise the professional standards of firms engaging in building commissioning.

To improve the practice of building commissioning by encouraging professionals in a firm to engage in a continuing education program of professional development related to commissioning.

To identify firms with acceptable knowledge of the principles and practices of building commissioning through completing an application and fulfilling prescribed standards of performance and conduct.

To award special recognition to those firms who have demonstrated a high level of competence and ethical fitness for building commissioning.

READ MORE

Development of a Knowledge-Based System to Improve Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Coordination

ABSTRACT - CIFE: Center for Integrated Facility Engineering

Thomas M. Korman and C.B. Tatum

CIFE Technical Report #129

July, 2001

STANFORD UNIVERSITY - Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) coordination is a major challenge for complex buildings and industrial plants.  It involves locating equipment and routing connecting elements for each system using a process of sequentially comparing and overlaying transparent drawings of MEP systems on a light table to detect spatial interferences.  This multi-discipline effort is time-consuming, expensive, and requires knowledge regarding each system over the project life.

Currently, designers and constructors use tailored computer tools to design and fabricate MEP systems, but no knowledge-based computer technology exists to assist in the multidiscipline MEP coordination effort.  Effective MEP coordination requires recalling and integrating knowledge regarding design, construction, operations, and maintenance of each MEP system.

The research investigators believed that the use information technology could significantly improve the current process.  Hence, the purpose of this research was to develop a technology that integrates a number of knowledge bases – design criteria, construction, operations, and maintenance – into a knowledge-based system that is able to provide valuable insight to engineers and construction personnel, as well as assist them in resolving coordination problems for multiple MEP systems.

READ THE PAPER

 

YouTube: U.S. Greenbuild: “Fueling generational change around the globe”

AEE Commissioning Survey – please contribute your opinion

The Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) has been awarded a DOE grant to expand our existing industry recognized building commissioning training program.  We are asking industry professionals to complete a survey on building commissioning training as part of the project.

 

Would you please assist us by completing the short survey?  The survey is available at http://www.aeecenter.org/i4a/survey/survey.cfm?id=11.

The term “retro commissioning” will soon be on the forefront of the green building movement.

YouTube: Building Commissioning: a comparison between ships and buildings

BIM Roadmap 2011: Ramp Up Your BIM Implementation Curve; 4-Part Webinar Series

via registrationheadquarters.com

Proven Benefits, Increased Demand, Is Reality Exceeding Promise?

In our first BIM Roadmap series (2008), we took a first look at where the construction industry stood in understanding what Building Information Modeling (BIM) was, where it was going and how owners and contractors should get started. Indeed, back then we got many emails asking what “B-I-M” stood for when we failed to spell it out in one of our promotions! Since then, BIM has clearly come a long way.

The A/E community is on the downhill slope of transition from 2D computer-aided drafting (CAD) to drawing directly in 3D BIM software. Most federal agencies have BIM initiatives and many non-federal public organizations are adding their own requirements. On large complex projects, BIM use is becoming a no-brainer for its ability to coordinate trades and eliminate design conflicts. Forward-thinking owners AND contractors understand that BIM saves them time and money, and no longer is the question asked who should pay the extra costs of BIM. It’s not a question of cost anymore, it’s a question of real productivity gains.

In our 4th annual BIM Roadmap series, we call upon industry experts to relate their experiences, and tell you how and why you should move on to the next step in your own quest to become BIM-fluent. You cannot afford to NOT implement BIM. Today, it’s a clear competitive advantage. Tomorrow, it will be second nature and expected to be implemented.

NOTE: One of the instructors is Finith Jernigan, author of “BIG BIM,little bim”.

Smart BIM Best Practices and Benefits for Building Owners

Real Time BIM For the Life Cycle from KimonOnuma on Vimeo.

I attended an inspiring “Smart BIM Best Practices and Benefits for Building Owners,” held at Qualcomm in San Diego. We’ll post an additional presentation or two, as they become available. This professional program was organized, in part, by Chuck Brands, vice-chair, buildingSMARTalliance, San Diego Interest Group.

Here are several take-aways:

1. BIM is undergoing a radical change, as radical as the movement from horse & buggy to automobiles.

2. While the software that is powering this change is extremely powerful, it is relatively easy to use. I saw basic layouts of buildings occur, superimposed on Google Earth, in well under an hour. This was done by audience members, with no previous experience using Onuma Systems software. They were using their smartphones, iPads and laptops – from the audience. No software installation was required.

3. There are terms and acronyms that the architectural community uses (quite necessarily), that are confusing to the rest of us. But 15 minutes over lunch with Phil Bona, Chair of the San Diego buildingSMARTalliance Interest Group, and it all made sense to me. I hope we can recapture that on video, Phil.

“Cx 2.0 – Building Commissioning Needs to Change” – read our Abstract.

ABSTRACT

We are busy submitting Abstracts this week. So far, we’ve submitted for The World Energy Engineer’s Congress in Chicago, the Best3 Conference in Atlanta, and we are also preparing a proposal for USGBC’s GreenBuild in Toronto. 

All of the Abstracts, while different, focus on Cx 2.0. Here is one of our Abstracts, in its entirety.

Cx 2.0 – Building Commissioning Needs to Change

Can building commissioning be thought of as a sustainable activity? Only if the industry elevates both its’ thinking and its’ approach. Business-as-usual is dying.

Cx 2.0 is a cloud-based, informal collaborative initiative to move commissioning activities into the cloud. Becoming paperless is only the beginning. That’s because the focus on becoming paperless carries additional benefits, including becoming more efficient and productive.

Traditionally, commissioning is paper intensive. Consequently, as more and more paper is produced, efficient and timely delivery of documents and deliverables suffers. People also suffer, bending under the weight of falling further and further behind. Too many long nights at the office or toiling over a home computer takes its toll.

As efficiency and timeliness flounder, essential information is delayed or even forgotten. Many times, the executed test procedures are never seen until a Commissioning Final Report is issued, sometimes up to a year following Substantial Completion. Updated Issues Logs may lag weeks behind the discovery of issues.

Another core advantage of Cx 2.0 is to provide an improved user experience of commissioning. For many people, commissioning and its seemingly byzantine processes can appear to be a giant black hole, a gravitational tunnel of mystery that most busy and productive people wisely avoid. This understandable behavior results, however, in owners, designers and contractors having little to no sense of control. How can you manage something that you don’t understand, something that requires reading a 50-100 page Commissioning Plan in order to develop a basic – and still confusing – overview?

The answer lies in cloud-based software tools, but only if they are deployed with a mindset that insists on keeping things simple and easy-to-understand. There is always someone who can take the simplest thing and make it utterly incomprehensible to their neighbor. Why do that? Why repeat history?

Web-based commissioning and project management software has been available for years. But many of these past efforts were viewed as being overly complex or too time-consuming. Software as a service (SaaS), or cloud-centric software deployed and used on the internet, changes the game. It can be astonishingly powerful, and equally astonishingly simple to deploy and easy to use. The key is to keep it simple.

This paper shall briefly examine the forces that are creating pressure for the commissioning industry to adopt a cloud-based approach. The paper will also depict, with illustrations, how today’s software tools look and work – relative to commissioning.

From a universal perspective, energy may be said to be inexhaustible. But commissioning’s current approaches are exhausting, to both the individuals involved in it and to the environment. This paper will also examine the human benefits of cloud-based commissioning.

Finally, the paper will take a look at several end users who represent an unstoppable force for change, powerful corporations and federal agencies who are insisting that design and construction teams – including commissioning providers – make significant and sustainably sound improvements to their delivery systems.

Cx 2.0 – it’s really about having an elevated mind-set

Tired of being tired? Got too much to do? Well, that’s the world of commissioning. Or is it?

One day I woke up and said, “Man, I sure am tired of living this way!”

I got inspired, and decided it was time to change lanes. That’s what Cx 2.0 is about – a new highway.

Cx 2.0 is all about lowering stress, getting more done with less effort, and increasing profitability. And that’s why we recommend moving your commissioning activities to the cloud. Because we have found that once you get over the initial hump of sorting your way through becoming a cloud-based company, things get easier – sometimes dramatically so.

Now, here’s the secret about why that happens – you experience a mind-set change. For example, I had always been taught that no one can close out a commissioning issue except the commissioning authority. My teachers were firm – there would be severe consequences if I touched sacred objects. So, I never questioned it. Until…

…Once we first rolled out the VirtualCxTeam project management website, I found myself staring at an online Issues Log. There it was, all organized, feature rich, easy to use, convenient. Something in me just clicked: why not let people close out their own issues?

It was so clear to see. Do you know how much time we are saving by making just that one, single adjustment? And how much more empowered everyone else is, now that they are trusted to close their own issues? And how great it is to have instant Issues Log updates? That anyone can see? At anytime?

I treasure the concept that ‘moving to the cloud’ represents. Because it clearly provides a higher perspective, an ability to view things from the 25000’ level. It’s moving from green to blue. And anyone can benefit from a better perspective. I know I have. My blood pressure is lower by 15  to 20 points. Heck, my resting pulse rate has fallen from 85 to 58. We’ve done other things that are contributing to that. But add them all up, and I think Cx 2.0 is something to deeply consider.

The VirtualCx Daily – an online newspaper

VirtualCx: Paper.li is a very cool concept, auto-producing a daily newspaper based on your Twitter or Facebook feeds, tags, etc. If you like Flipboard for iPad, you’ll likely be knocked out by this, too (it is browser-based). Check out The VirtualCx Daily.

From the team at Paper.li

SmallRivers is a privately held startup incorporated in Switzerland (Lausanne) and located on the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL campus.

Co-founded by Edouard Lambelet and Iskander Pols, the company is focused on facilitating the discovery of relevant content and other people of interest on the web. Paper.li is our latest development, and by far the most promising. This is why the company is now entirely devoted to making it even better…

We like the semantic web, we look for simplicity, we respect content creators and we thrive on feedback – make sure to read our blog to get the latest news, or follow us on Twitter: @smallrivers

 

iPad Signatures – getting field testing forms signed off

Question: When using the iPad for field testing, how do you get actual signatures (of test participants/witnesses) on to the test forms?

There are several ways we handle signatures. First, is to get it via an app such as iAnnotate or SignMyPad. Second, we can capture it via one of our tablet PCs, and third we sometimes have it emailed to us.

Once we have the signature, we then get permission from that person to insert it on any document that they have participated in. When we use this particular method, we always make sure to send the person copies of anything that they ‘signed’, i.e., stuff we inserted (with their permission) their signature into.

To input the signature, a stylus works best, but some signers don’t really care. And people who are familiar with touch screens seem to adapt fairly well without a stylus. Another option, when asking for a signature, is just to ask for their initials. That’s easy to do with the fingers.

Also, in our test procedures, we have a form that says something to the effect that “the people whose names are listed here have agreed to have their signature electronically reproduced on test documents.”

Keep in mind that electronic signatures are legal, just like a hand written signature. That means that the typed words “My Signature” have the same legal authority as something hand written. There are also Digital Signature services available, that verify a digital signature. You may also want to take a look at services such as DocuSign.

[Thanks to Brent M. Capps, Building Systems Group, Inc., for the question.] 

Best Smartphone for the Building Commissioning business

Short Answer: It depends on what you like.

My Solution: iPhone. Read on for why.

My Conversion – As a long time Blackberry user, I am making the switch to the Verizon iPhone. I’ve had a lot of smart phones and Pocket PCs over the years. One of the clumsiest aspects of all of these devices has been a way to sync emails, appointments and contact names effortlessly. It can be done, but sometimes the path to get there has left me bruised and frustrated on the side of the trail.

Once I bought my iPad, I became an instant convert to Apple products. With its astonishing ease of use, and its inexpensive and effortless software uploads and deployments, I was pretty much blown away. I immediately began considering the iPhone.

Calendars and Contacts – Since we use Gmail/Google for our email, coordinating email between all of our devices is easy. An iPad app called Pocket Informant HD retrieves my Google calendar updates, so that takes care of my laptop and iPad being in sync. But my Blackberry is left out of calendar syncing, and so I have to perform duplicate entries to keep my smart phone up-to-date. And my contact lists in my Blackberry are different than what is in my email accounts.

Blogging – There’s another reason for the iPhone IV: blogging and its camera. We do a lot of blogging about commissioning. I’ve always wanted to do more ‘real time’ reporting from the field, including taking pictures or videos of actual issues, and writing articles on-the-fly. For years there have been ways to post to a blog from a phone, but they always seemed a bit clunky. The iPhone’s camera quality and iPhone apps make it a cinch.

Conclusion – Because of its ability to easily sync across devices, combined with ease of use and powerful, inexpensive software, I am making the switch to the iPhone.Blogging can be done in real time. Calendars, emails and contacts will all be coordinated. Technology will finally serve me; I’ll be more efficient. At last.

iPad – using it in the building commissioning business

Scale of 1 to 5: 5+ Stars

Last year we bought two, then three iPads for our small business. That’s a fairly substantial thing to do, especially when we also have to provide laptops, smart phones, tools, meters, good food and all the other goodies that make a delightful commissioning person.

So, how’s it working out? Great, actually. Depending on what we are doing on a given day, it’s easy for the iPad to be our go-to resource 80% of the time. When I travel, it’s with the iPad. Aside from phone calls, if I have a choice between iPad, smart phone or laptop – the iPad wins every time.

We also use it for field work, including field testing, site inspections, system verification checklists, meeting notes, daily reports and more.

Fast Test Results

The test procedure shown above was written in Word, but filled out in the field on an iPad. It was uploaded to the VirtualCxTeam website the same day, and has been available for the entire team to view since the day of the test. Compare this with waiting months to get a final Cx report – long after occupancy – because that’s how long it often takes before anyone typically sees an executed test procedure: months.