Receiving a commission: new construction projects are investments in the future, and building commissioning insures that all will go according to plan and promise.

Ensuring a new campus construction building will operate efficiently and effectively to support its intended program begins before the first spade of dirt is turned. Building Commissioning is the process of ensuring that a facility's operating, maintenance, and program support requirements are met and that the institution is receiving the quality for which it has contracted.

The complexity of today's construction process requires an owner to be an expert in such areas as mechanical systems design, energy management, building programming, construction techniques, and operations and maintenance, to name just a few.

"But too often there is a disconnect," says Middlebury College's David Ginevan, Executive Vice President of Facilities Planning. "That's why we started budgeting for a Commissioning Agent to play a central role in the development of our new construction projects."

The emerging role of commissioning agents-rapidly becoming an accepted practice in all types of construction--taps into expertise developed from involvement on many other projects and campuses. "A Commissioning Agent's role is roughly that of a 'super project manager;" he says. Reporting to the owner, the agent "... speaks the language of designers, builders, engineers and users and can, among other things, translate among parties. They also have clout as representatives of the college.

"The Commissioning Agent conducts tests to assess agreed-upon benchmarks during construction, as well as at the end of the project when everything is supposed to (but never does) work perfectly. With that background and involvement, commissioning can avoid problems during design and construction as well as identify corrective alternatives. In reducing post-construction finger-pointing alone, commissioning has saved us thousands of dollars."

While commissioning represents a new spending outlay, capital and operating cost savings, increases in building performance, maintenance operator training, and higher user satisfaction invariably outweigh the cost.

Ginevan's first experience with building commissioning was with Middlebury's $44 million, 220,000 GSF and highly celebrated Bicentennial t tall science building which opened in time for the Vermont college's 200th anniversary in 2000. Ginevan cites the ARAMARK's Design Review team with identifying over $250,000 in capital savings and $79,000 annual operating savings. Other benefits of building commissioning included:

* $430,000 in cost exposures identified and addressed at construction installation inspection.

* Increases in building performance resulting from system verification. Examples include reductions in airflows during unoccupied time, increased control of temperature and humidity in lab spaces, and ensuring proper function of the central pure water system.

"You have to get commissioning involved at the beginning--sometimes over others' objections-to ensure that everything works right," Ginevan stresses. "When I initially allocated less than one percent of the cost of the building for a commissioning, some people objected. After the project was completed, they insisted that we include commissioning in the budget for every new construction project we undertake."