Commissioning is a process for ensuring that a system is designed and operated as intended; commissioning helps achieve larger goals of sustainable design and operation, Life Cycle Cost (LCC) effectiveness, efficient use of investments, minimizing overall maintenance and utility costs, component life reliability and performance expectations. AiCARR, ASHRAE and CIBSE have agreed to draw from definitions and terminology that appear in their publications or in their other resources for the purpose of harmonization by developing a first collective work on the topic. This workshop presents the state of terminology in each country and a proposal for a common overview.

Commissioning is a process for ensuring that a system is designed and operated as intended; commissioning helps achieve larger goals of sustainable design and operation, Life Cycle Cost (LCC) effectiveness, efficient use of investments, minimizing overall maintenance and utility costs, component life reliability and performance expectations. AiCARR, ASHRAE and CIBSE have agreed to draw from definitions and terminology that appear in their publications or in their other resources for the purpose of harmonization by developing a first collective work on the topic. This workshop presents the state of terminology in each country and a proposal for a common overview.

This seminar focuses on a specific project for a new laboratory building for a major cancer research institution. Specifically, the presentation discusses energy recovery, demand based ventilation, occupancy sequencing and building pressurization strategies that were implemented and the lessons learned during commissioning of the HVAC systems.

There are a multitude of challenges associated with designing, constructing and operating BSL-3 laboratories. The combination of user expectations, regulatory compliance, risk considerations and contractor interpretation of specifications can result in a delay in opening these laboratories from 1-2 years or longer. This presentation discusses the practical implications of commissioning BSL3 laboratories. It will provide an overview of the different organizations providing regulatory compliance, discuss the various risk factors involved with programmatic decision making, review engineered systems and ventilation strategies and the impact these decisions have on operational strategies. This presentation highlights essential documentation for sustainable operation.

Building EQ has many new features and offers support for ASHRAE members in their energy savings efforts. The most prominent change is that data will be entered through a web portal rather than filling out a spreadsheet. New marketing tools will be provided to members as the year progresses.

Adapt Building EQ provides a college senior-level undergraduate or graduate course on building energy auditing and analysis using the ASHRAE Building EQ rating system as a learning framework. Students will experience project-based learning through hands-on engineering in real buildings under the guidance of industry professionals. The course is nominally three semester credit hours. It involves 10 weeks of classroom instruction followed by five weeks of hands-on field work in teams under the guidance of local industry mentors. Course content will be freely available through ASHRAE student branches. Students will be expected to purchase some resources through ASHRAE with student discounts.

The ASHRAE Building EQ program benefits owners and managers of building portfolios. For each building, the program provides an energy rating along with actionable recommendations to improve building performance. These recommendations are made by a professional assessment of a building’s energy use as determined by In Operation and/or As Designed ratings method. Building EQ is the only rating system that offers both methods with a consistent baseline to make comparisons along with detailed actionable recommendations. ASHRAE entered into an agreement with APPA in July 2016 with the commitment to cooperate across many areas including implementing Building EQ on university campuses.

APPA is the preeminent organization for university facilities management in North America. APPA has 15,000 members at 1400 institutions. APPA is keenly interested in transforming the way we look at performance of buildings. APPA entered into an agreement with ASHRAE to cooperate in areas of mutual interest. Building EQ offers one opportunity to advance facilities management and help positively shape our current and future built environment.

The commercial kitchen ventilation (CKV) system is just that, a system, complete with hoods, exhaust and makeup air fans, makeup air conditioning and delivery and in many cases, demand-based controls. Simply stated, when commissioning (Cx) is compromised, CKV performance falls short of client expectations! Unfortunately, commissioning a CKV system is a complex, multi-phase task not always understood by the design community. Many times, the failure of an exhaust hood to capture effluent from the cooking process could have been mitigated through effective commissioning. This is a high-level perspective on the commissioning process applied to a commercial kitchen.

What are the common issues typically found while performing a test and balance of a CKV system? Several examples are presented that display the common issues found when performing a test and balance as part of both new construction and rebalancing of existing sites due to inadequate design, improper installation and poor maintenance.

Commercial kitchen ventilation systems (CKV) are a subset within the overall building HVAC, which requires a proper approach to system design, installation and commissioning for operation and performance. System design, quality products and integration are critical; however, the realities of field installations shows that, “where the rubber meets the road, your mileage may vary.” This seminar highlights many of the common issues discovered in the field when performing a system design verification to ensure proper and sustainable operation.

Participants will gain a better understanding of commissioning deliverables from the CxA and/or construction team to be passed to operations. An effective operation and maintenance program benefits when all relevant deliverables are received at project turnover, bridging a commonly experienced gap in information. It is also important to identify what documentation will benefit the relevant committees in their guidance to professionals in creating and receiving those deliverables. ASHRAE recently issued Guideline 1.4 on the Systems Manual. Is this a good starting point for documentation or just another formalization of process? This speaker examines the consultant's perspective.

Higher education projects are normally required to obtain a LEED certification. Embracing LEED requirements is challenging; but many are now convinced that it can significantly improve operations! LEED projects produce commissioning deliverables that are currently underutilized in bridging the gap to operations management. A higher level of awareness and improved implementation of the Final Commissioning Report and Systems Manual deliverables will greatly improve communication from schematic design through long term operation of the building. Developing an Owner’s Project Requirement (OPR) early will ensure that what is proposed in the design and constructed can be maintained well at a low cost.

It is often said that improvements in building operations can yield 10 – 20% energy savings. Effective Building Re-tuning (BRT) techniques developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that identify energy efficiency opportunities rely on data from a Building Automation Systems. Unfortunately, many buildings have no such trending abilities. Using loggers, sensors and a methodology, BRT-like measures developed by CUNY Building Performance Laboratory identifies operational improvements across building systems. This seminar describes CUNY BPL’s experience creating and applying solutions to many building systems; it also speaks to the potential for automation to reduce operator effort in acquiring recommendations for operational improvements.

A case study is examined where the information gap between construction and operations was successfully bridged at the commissioning phase of a project utilizing a tablet-based information portal on the owner's cloud. In this example, operational information which is critical to thermal comfort and energy performance was effectively communicated and leveraged a video archive. The necessity of this communication occurs not only at the commissioning phase and project turnover to operations but also serves as a useful information resource for the life of the facility and its systems.

This workshop includes the building owner's perspective on the definition of OPR, why the OPR is important and summarizes their responsibilities in developing the OPR. Key points to be discussed are: The communication gap between Owner, Designer and Cx provider; Who takes (or should take) the lead? The audience will break into small groups and provide an opaque OPR. The Owner and Cx provider will have a pre-written script and play the role of an Owner of a commercial office building. The groups will interview the Owner and rewrite the section of the OPR to reflect the actual needs of the Owner. The Cx provider will then present an example of an effective OPR, stimulate open discussion and questions and compare the example OPR against a selected group's document.

An experienced commissioning (Cx) provider shares their perspective on the definition of OPR, why the OPR is important and summarizes the essential components. Key points to be discussed are: A clear definition of the Owner's expectations reduces the risk of unclear intent, unfulfilled expectations and unnecessary disputes; An OPR that reflects the actual needs of the Owner, the users or occupants, and facility staff is needed for Cx to be successful.

National labs, universities, and industry are all developing significant capabilities for urban-scale building energy modeling…once a virtual city is constructed. To construct the models, most rely on local data sources that work at the scale of a city or county (such as a tax assessor’s database) or flyover of the area of interest, but do not use data sources or algorithms that would scale to areas the size of a metropolis, state, or entire country. This presentation will show recent advances in scalable capabilities for automatically creating fully-articulated OpenStudio and EnergyPlus models of individual buildings for any area of interest.

A building’s façade is a major element that accounts for 70% of building energy performance. Compared with the internal mechanical system and operation schedule, façade features information is relatively easy to obtain from the visual aspects of a building. Instead of using traditional and complicated simulation methods, a mathematical model can be established to estimate EUI baselines based on sufficient existing building practices data. This prediction modeling approach will provide a more realistic EUI estimation tool for calculating an energy use baseline and will enable real-time energy usage monitoring and management of each targeted building.

Buildings in cities consume 30 to 70% of the cities’ total primary energy. Retrofitting the existing building stock to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy use is necessary to reduce green-house-gas emissions and mitigate climate change. We present a case study on district-scale energy retrofit analysis using CityBES, a web-based toolkit developed by LBNL. Two retrofit scenarios are studied: evaluating energy savings and cost of typical energy conservation measures (ECMs) for a portfolio of hundreds of buildings in downtown San Francisco; and optimizing a package of ECMs that can achieve 50% energy savings for all buildings in the district.

New steam boilers and hot water boilers need special attention paid to the application of water treatment during the startup/commissioning process. Proper cleaning and passivation during the startup will prevent equipment failures or poor energy performance. Steps to prevent mineral scale and corrosion should be implemented as soon as water is introduced into these systems. This seminar provides guidance (with checklist) on the steps required to prepare the boiler systems for service.

New cooling towers, evaporative condensers, fluid coolers, piping and chiller equipment must be commissioned properly to control waterside problems that will reduce equipment life, efficiency, reliability and safety. Proper startup and commissioning is especially important to reduce the potential for white rust corrosion in new cooling water systems containing galvanized metallurgy. This seminar explains the proper commissioning of new or retrofitted cooling water system construction projects and how to avoid costly damages and potential litigation due to uncontrolled water chemistry.

When building water system Legionnaires' disease outbreaks occur no matter how long after construction or renovation, commonly those involved in design and construction are named parties should subsequent litigation occur. And when building water system Legionnaires' disease outbreaks occur within one year of construction or renovation almost always those involved in design and construction are primary named parties should subsequent litigation occur. This seminar covers simple and easy steps to validate that critical commissioning steps of aerosolizing water systems have been completed and are properly documented to insure compliance with ASHRAE 188 and industry best practices.

This presentation covers the approach, methodology and lessons learned of a performance-based chiller retrofit project. The performance evaluation included a life-cycle cost assessment of replacement options that involved a data-driven energy model and an accurate understanding of the baseline energy consumption in the existing condition through a building survey and detailed trend analysis. Lessons learned from construction oversight and performance-based commissioning is also presented.

This presentation includes a discussion regarding the role of the EOR in bridging the process that begins with the owner, continues through design, construction and commissioning and ends with the delivery of a fully tested and operational facility. The discussion includes issues linking the EOR and the CxA, including how and when the CxA should be introduced into the design process, how the design and specifications should provide “hooks” to clearly designate to the contractors and subcontractors their own responsibilities to the CxA Team and the CxA Process and what can go wrong when those issues are omitted.

The presentation includes a discussion regarding the role of the commissioning agent and what information is required from both the Owner and EOR to facilitate a successful commissioning program. It also discusses how and why the CxA must remain independent of the EOR while also teaming with the EOR and the entire project team to facilitate a win-win outcome. The presentation explains how expanding the traditional scope of commissioning can be made to easily include leading the effort to deliver the needed FM/O&M programs, procedures and training.

Taking on an energy management program of a large campus or portfolio of properties can be a daunting task. Rather than “putting out fires” by approaching projects independently, this study analyzes a strategic, deliberate approach to achieving institutional energy cost reduction through a repeatable, stepwise roadmap plan that involves financial planning, needs assessments, prioritization and implementation of audits, retro-commissioning and measures. Setting up your plan allows you to actually predict the impact of the optimization process.

Seriously, how do you approach RetroCx of a 30,000 ton chiller plant? We will take a deep dive into a University of Arizona campus chilled water plant that includes 22 chillers and 300 ice storage tanks. The discussion covers the process and findings of the work which includes the load management and chiller staging to improve plant efficiency. It also covers the field modifications completed at the plant to implement the RetroCx measures. Finally it discusses the OnGoing Monitoring based Cx that has further optimized the plant.

How you look for optimization opportunities and present the value takes special care to ensure buy-in from owners and operators. This study focuses on how to hunt down measures, present them with confidence, ensure successful implementation and verify results. Specific examples from large commercial buildings are presented.

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a bottom-up method of modeling complex systems that simulates the actions and interactions of autonomous agents. ABM is being used to look at consumer adoption of technologies ranging from cosmetics to electric vehicles and are often used as a replacement for diffusion models. This seminar presents the use of ABM to estimate the adoption of energy efficient building technologies. In the model, building owners make decisions based on a wide variety of economic and non-economic factors. A study of the nationwide adoption of hot water heating technology is shown.

With the advent of urban scale reality models, creating community, campus or Urban Building Energy Models (UBEM) has become as easy as a few hours of capturing photos with a drone. Combining the virtual model with benchmarking, facility, utility, management data and BIM models allows data to be easily queried. This presentation demonstrates several examples of how UBEM can visualize and report on benchmarking, utility and facility management data at the community, campus or urban scale. Virtual navigation of a campus and several cities will demonstrate how UBEM can be used to measure, analyze and report readily available urban data.