Across the nation, various energy efficiency, sustainable and high performance programs require building commissioning to be incorporated into construction projects. Many national, state, and municipal codes also require commissioning. While engaging a design and construction team in a project is standard practice, commissioning still is often approached with ambiguity. Given how long commissioning has [...]
As the field of commissioning has grown and evolved over the past 25+ years, it has become a valued component of building projects in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (A/E/C) industry. There are hundreds of highly respected and qualified commissioning providers throughout the country. Many of them are part of a team within larger engineering firms. When [...]
The Benefits of Near End of Warranty Reviews Most people that have been in the construction industry are familiar with the phrase “taillight warranty.” The phrase is used to describe how the only warranty service at the end of a construction project was watching the taillight of your contractors as they drove away, never [...]
Every few years the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification program goes through a review process and is updated to reflect the constantly changing technologies of today’s world and ways in which to leverage them to improve building performance. When the LEED program was updated to Version 4, a new option was [...]
Since the beginning of the modern HVAC industry, the design, installation and testing of a building automation system (BAS) has remained relatively untouched. The process is as follows: First, an engineer will develop control drawings and desired sequence of operations for the various pieces of HVAC equipment in their design documents. From there, an [...]
Staying Warm in the Land of Lumber (and Moose) SES was hired by a school district in northern Maine to provide commissioning services for their new 213,000-square-foot middle/high school. One unique aspect of this project was the use of a hybrid central heating plant that combined liquid propane fired [...]
Getting the Last 10% Anyone involved in construction projects has at least one war story about completing the last 10 percent of a challenging project. The last 10 percent I’m referring to here is the range of tasks or deliverables that can include: punch list work, commissioning issues close-out, as-built documentation, O&M manuals delivery, [...]
Canned Routines: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly I recently found myself sitting in a mechanical penthouse being told by the automated temperature controls (ATC) contractor, through the hum of rotating equipment and the incessant whine of variable frequency drives, that yet another sequence was not provided as specified. Instead, we got a [...]
