Commissioning is being replaced by paperwork that has the same name.
A building gets signed off as tested. Nobody tested it. The report is the product, the building is incidental, and the owner cannot tell the difference for years — if ever. There was no name for this. Now there is.
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Twelve Questions to Ask Before You Sign a Cx Proposal
A procurement checklist for owners, owner's reps and project managers. Twelve questions, what a good answer sounds like, and what the evasion sounds like.
What Cheap Commissioning Actually Costs
The numbers on commissioning cost and payback are good — and they are the reason the industry is being hollowed out. Here's the arithmetic, honestly, including the parts that cut against my argument.
Functional Testing Is Not Watching the Contractor Push a Button
A functional performance test forces the system into failure and abnormal states and records what it does. Most of what gets called functional testing is a guided demonstration by the person being tested.
Making Cx Mandatory Is What Broke It
Energy codes and green rating systems turned commissioning from a service owners bought into a permit condition they must satisfy. That change in the buyer's motive is the root cause of drive-by Cx.
The Report Was Written Before Anyone Went to the Site
How to read a commissioning report forensically — timestamps, issue-log distributions, boilerplate residue, and the difference between a test record and a test.
Drive-By Cx, Defined
The term isn't in any standard, so let's fix that. Drive-by commissioning is commissioning performed as documentation rather than verification — and it is sold under the same name as the real thing.