Commissioning is a quality assurance process for new construction projects that begins with pre-design and continues through design, construction, and early operation. Commissioning is intended to ensure that building systems and equipment have been designed, installed, and tested to perform in accordance with the design intent.
Retro-Commissioning, or “existing building commissioning,” is a systematic process for identifying and implementing operational and maintenance improvements in a building to ensure continued good performance over time. The intent of the process is to optimize the performance of building subsystems as well as how they function together. Retro-Commissioning focuses on operations and maintenance improvements and diagnostic testing, although needed capital improvements may be identified and recommended through the process.
The use of benchmarking provides the basis for empowering building owners to take steps towards minimizing energy use and maximizing the economic benefits of energy conservation measures. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides a tool to track buildings’ annual energy and water consumption. The output of this tool is the EPA energy performance rating, which indicates how efficiently buildings use energy on a 1 to 100 scale. A rating of 50 indicates average energy performance while a rating of 75 or better indicates top performance. What are the benefits of benchmarking?
Applied across a portfolio of buildings, benchmarking provides the foundation for superior energy management decisions, ranging from identifying the top performers to prioritizing the best candidates for upgrades.
Monitor Changes
Scoring a building over a period of time can help evaluate the effectiveness of changes in equipment or management.
Proactive Energy Management
Having a building’s energy consumption data summarized and documented helps answer questions about energy use from upper management, prospective purchasers, tenants, lenders or investors.
Get Positive Publicity
Documentation of a building’s improved energy efficiency or reduced energy consumption over time provides a basis to communicate an environmentally-friendly image to interested parties.
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