Building Commissioning Bingo!

September 21, 2020
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Quality, Consequences and the Construction Industrial Complex (part 253).

Commissioning bingo is one of my favourite games. It is simple, if you are in a meeting and you hear more than three commissioning acronyms you have to shout “Bingo”!

To say the building commissioning landscape is chaotic would be an understatement. It is a hot mess of competing and contradictory codes, standards and qualifications. The idea behind building commissioning is simple i.e. trust but verify. However, the execution is not easy.

Lets look at the current word salad of building commissioning services. All these services are derivatives of “trust but verify”.

Building Commissioning Services

Execution is not easy because owners and design teams cannot articulate, differentiate and specify the appropriate commissioning scope of work.

The word salad gets worse when we consider there are at least 16 building commissioning specialisms i.e. Job tasks, that in theory, need to be applied to each project.

Building Commissioning Specialisms

Next time you hire a building commissioning firm for say a data center or hospital, consider that in theory, they need to have 16 in house specialists to deliver on “trust but verify” and ensure your mission critical building is operational and fit for purpose.

IMHO, the minimum in house commissioning skill set for any firm bidding a commissioning project is:

1. CxM
2. HVAC+Refrig Cx
3. Plumbing Cx
4. ELV Cx
5. IST Cx

BINGO!

Next post we will look at how all the above is structured, what should be specified and the certifications that can be obtained.