The commissioning process for existing building systems and assemblies

Session 5 Paper 4, CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium, Imperial College, London, UK
18th and 19th April 2012

The commissioning process for existing building systems and assemblies (EBCxP) is profitable and enhances the health, productivity and morale of building occupants. Given the reported 1.1-year simple payback of this process (Mills), it is surprising that it has seen only marginal application in the USA. One of the reasons EBCxP has not gained traction is that the USA does not have a normative guideline defining the process. The most prominent existing guidelines (State of California, Building Commissioning Association) describe the process based on generalized experiences. Although these are necessary first steps in the empirical development of the process, they are not sufficiently precise for integration into legislation. The industry needs a normative guideline adoptable as a standard and forming the basis for legislation. This paper describes the first such normative EBCxP guideline, currently under development by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), guideline committee (GDL) 0.2.