Commissioning: Danish Building Commissioning Process mentioned in Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities

Commissioning af byggeri - opfind den dybe tallerken

Vi arbejder til daglig med at fylde det hul ud, der opstår mellem byggefasen og driftsfasen. Vores redskaber er workshops med bygherre / ejer, der hjælper med at sætte målbare krav til byggeriets ydeevne inden byggesagen går i gang. Vi fører dialog med byggesagens parter for at få input til checklister og kontrolplaner. Dette, sammen med helhedsorienterede tests giver en helhedsorienteret kvalitetssikringsproces, der validerer ejerens krav gennem hele byggeprocessen.
Vores "bibel" er DS 3090, Commissioning-processen til bygninger.

Den kritiske bygherre kan naturligvis spørge:

- Har jeg ikke allerede betalt for det?

Svaret på dette spørgsmål er både ja og nej.

Ja, fordi der sikkert er en pasus i hver underleverandøraftale om, at underleverandøren skal indregulere, teste og verificere sin leverance.

Nej, dels fordi en hoved- eller totalentreprenør typisk ingen kvalifikationer har til at kvalitetssikre dette arbejde, dels fordi der intet står om underentreprenørens anlægs formåen i en helhed med andre underentreprenørers leverancer.
Populært sagt har en bygherre krav på, at komponenter er kvalitetssikret, men der står ingenting om systemer, der består af mange komponenter og leverancer.

Derfor kan vi sige, at vi opfinder den dybe tallerken igen ved at fokusere på de kontraktlige forpligtelser, der allerede er i byggeprocessen. Derpå drejer og justerer vi disse forpligtelser, indtil de målrettet kan bruges til at dokumentere, at brugerens samlede behov for funktion er opfyldt.

Der er typisk behov for Commissioning for at sikre brugernes gnidningsfri ibrugtagning af et byggeri eller sikre, at anlæggenes funktion ikke kolliderer med brugernes adfærd, med forringet funktion til følge, det være sig alt fra dårligt indeklima over dårlig funktion af specifikke processer til forhøjet energiforbrug.

En ordentlig Commissioning proces efterlader brugerens bygningsansvarlige med en veldokumenteret bygning, hvor driftsrutinerne er godt igang.

In English:

Building Commissioning - reinvent the wheel

We are working daily to fill the gap that usually occurs between the construction phase and operations phase of a new building. Our tools are workshops, that reveals the Owners Project Requirements, plans, tests, checklists and status reporting, which we organize systematically to a holistic quality assurance process.
We work with Commissioning as described in ASHRAE Guideline 0-2005, The Commissioning Process.

The critical building owner can naturally ask:

- Don't I already pay for my contractors for this?

The answer to this question is both yes and no.

Yes, because there certainly is a chapter in each subcontractor agreement stating that the subcontractor must balance, test and verify the delivery.

No, because a principal or main contractor typically have no qualifications to ensure quality work on technical installations, and usually nothing is stated in the contract with the contractor to assure that all the different technical installations delivered and tested by several subcontractors, will function as a unified whole and thereby facilitating the coming operations of the building.

Applying the Commissioning Process we focus on the contractual obligations already in the Building Process. We work with these obligations, adjust them, and supply the process with more tests to prove and verify that the user needs to function is fulfilled.

There is typically a need for commissioning to ensure smooth transition from the buildings phase to the operations phase. It is a way to ensure that the plant will operate according to the owners requirements to prevent poor indoor climate, the malfunction of specific machinery or increased energy consumption.

A proper Commissioning Process leaves the user's facilities manager with a well-documented building where operational processes are well started.

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torsdag den 13. september 2012

Danish Building Commissioning Process mentioned in Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities

Here is the abstract from an article in the May/June 2012 issue of Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities.

The authors are Rúnar Örn Ágústsson and Per Anker Jensen from Technical University of Denmark.

The complete article, is accessed at the ASCE web library:

http://ascelibrary.org/toc/jpcfev/26/3

Building commissioning has been gaining momentum and awareness within the building industry as a comprehensive quality assurance process that can be used throughout the buildings life cycle to ensure that the needs and requirements the owner has for the building are met. Although building commissioning is gaining momentum it is still far away from being viewed as normal practice within the building industry. Of the countries that are the closest to succeeding in making building commissioning normal practice, the United States is the leader. To decrease the time it will take for commissioning to become normal practice in countries were commissioning is taking its first steps or has not yet been used, it would be beneficial to learn from the leading nations on how they have implemented commissioning. Because the United States is among the leading nations in implementing commissioning, there is a lot that can be learned from on how that process has evolved and all the effort that has been put into research on building commissioning. This article investigates how the commissioning process is undertaken at a leading commissioning providing consulting company in Denmark, and presents a case study with a comparison between two shopping malls out of which one has not been through a commissioning process, while the other has. The benefits of commissioning are outlined and proposals for how the process can be improved in the Danish consulting company compared to the well-established ASHRAE 0-2005 guideline. Finally, the article discusses and concludes what the future steps for commissioning in a country like Denmark should be based on how commissioning has evolved in the United States.