Enhanced project delivery to meet your objectives
Providing unmatched performance with building commissioning
The building commissioning process (CxP) ensures we meet your expectations throughout your project.
McCownGordon highly recommends involving building commissioning in your project for its wide array of benefits and short payback timelines. CxP validates and documents that systems are in working condition together to meet owner expectations. There are three primary types of commissioning: New Building Commissioning, which focuses on newly constructed structures; Retro/Existing Building Commissioning, aimed at optimizing the performance of older buildings; and Monitoring-Based Commissioning, which involves continuous monitoring to proactively manage building systems.Â
Commissioning Services
NEW BUILDING COMMISSIONING
New building commissioning is a quality assurance process for newly constructed building. It’s a systematic process that ensures all the building systems, from electrical and plumbing to heating and ventilation, work as intended before people move in. The goal is to guarantee that the building operates efficiently, safely, and in line with its design.Â
RETRO/EXISTING BUILDING COMMISSIONING
When dealing with older structures, retro/existing building commissioning becomes crucial. It involves a comprehensive evaluation of an existing building’s performance, with the aim of identifying areas for improvement. This could include optimizing energy usage, enhancing occupant comfort, and reducing operational costs. Essentially, it’s like a renovation project, but one that focuses on making the building run more efficiently.Â
MONITORING-BASED COMMISSIONING
Monitoring-based commissioning takes a proactive approach to building maintenance. It leverages advanced technology to continuously monitor various systems within a building, like HVAC, and lighting. Any deviations from expected performance trigger alerts, enabling timely intervention to prevent issues and optimize resource utilization. Think of it as real-time diagnostics for your building’s health. Additionally this can be layered on with optimization where the building setpoints, schedules and sequence of operations are fine tuned to meet the buildings personality.Â
BUILDING ASSESSMENTS
Our team of experts provides you with a holistic view of your building’s condition to determine the best process for construction. Through a Building Assessment, our team investigates the building condition and systems to evaluate risk and overall building performance. With a high level of attention to quality, we evaluate the building and site early during preconstruction in order to reduce the environmental impact of practices and materials and focus on life cycle assessments (LCA). We use programs like Sefaira and our in-house LCA tool to quickly evaluate energy usage versus utility, maintenance, and replacement costs to provide our clients the most sustainable option.
Commissioning Benefits
1. Energy Savings
- Projects with a comprehensive commissioning approach have up to 5x savings of the projects not commissioned.
- Average savings of 75% of the original savings after 20 years.
- Value of energy savings ranges from $0.02-$0.19/SF
- Value of non-energy savings ranges from $0.23-$6.96/SF
- Average costs are 0.4% of total construction
2. Affordability + Additional Savings
CxP provides an average of 13–16% annual energy savings, 8–20% lower equipment maintenance costs, better equipment performance, and better indoor air quality (IAQ), the average ROI for CxP range from 1.1 to 4.2 years—a solid return on your investment.
3. Reduces Maintenance + Future Costs
- Average owner maintenance costs of a commissioned building range between 18-20% less than a non-commissioned building.Â
- Between 46% and 62% of deficiencies identified during commissioning would manifest as higher repair/maintenance costs in the future.
