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.
If you are comparing commissioning proposals and they all look roughly the same, that is not because the services are equivalent. It's because commissioning proposals are written in a vocabulary that makes very different work sound identical. Every one of them will say "functional performance testing." Every one will reference ASHRAE Guideline 0.
Ask these instead. Ask them in a meeting, not by email, and listen for whether the answer contains specifics or contains the word "typically."
1. Who do you report to, and who signs your invoices?
Good: The owner, directly, under a separate agreement. Acceptable with caution: the design team, if the CxA is a separate firm with a documented independence policy. Bad: the general contractor or the design engineer whose systems are being verified. If the CxA is a subconsultant to the party being graded, everything downstream is compromised regardless of anyone's intentions.
2. How many hours are in this fee, and how are they distributed by phase?
Make them break it out: design review, submittal review, prefunctional verification, functional testing, seasonal testing, warranty review, documentation. A proposal that won't decompose is hiding the fact that most of the fee is documentation. Compare the shape of the distributions across bidders, not just the totals — that comparison is far more revealing than price.
3. What percentage of terminal units will you test, and how did you choose that number?
There's no single right answer; sampling is legitimate. But the answer should be a number with a rationale, and the sampling plan should escalate — if the first sample fails at a meaningful rate, the sample expands. "A representative sample" without a percentage or an escalation rule means whatever fits the fee.
4. Show me a functional test script from a completed project of similar type.
The single most useful question on this list. You are looking for: recorded values rather than pass/fail boxes, steps written against that project's actual sequence of operations, and failure-mode steps. Redacted is fine. Refusal is an answer.
5. Show me the issues log from that same project.
Count the items. Look at the ratio of controls and sequence findings to punch-list findings. Check whether closure entries include a CxA retest date. If they'll show you a script but not a log, that tells you something too.
6. Who physically performs the testing, and what are their credentials?
Not who signs the report — who is in the mechanical room. It is extremely common for a certified professional to sell the work and a first-year technician to perform it. That can be fine with real supervision. Ask what the supervision actually consists of, and ask how many hours the named senior person will be on site.
7. Will you attend design review, and what will you produce from it?
Design-phase involvement is where commissioning generates its highest return, because a coordination problem caught in a drawing costs a redline and the same problem caught at 95 percent complete costs a change order. A CxA joining at construction has already forfeited most of their potential value. Ask for a sample design review comment log.
8. What happens when you find something the contractor disputes?
Listen for a process: documented finding, contractor response, CxA position, escalation to the owner for decision. Listen for whether they've ever escalated. A CxA who has never had a fight has never pushed.
9. Is seasonal testing in this scope, and what triggers it?
This is the most commonly stripped scope item in the industry. If it's excluded, get it stated in writing as an exclusion so you're making the decision knowingly. If it's included, ask what happens if the season falls after project closeout — who holds the fee, and what's the mechanism to bring them back.
10. Is the ten-month warranty review included?
The review before manufacturer warranties expire is where an owner recovers real money. It is also outside the construction schedule, which is why it evaporates. Ask specifically. Get it in the contract with a date, not a phase.
11. What trend data will I receive, and for how long a period?
Ask for the point list and the duration. My floor: one full week of occupied operation after all issues are closed, at intervals fine enough to see control behavior. Trend logs are the least fakeable deliverable in commissioning, which is exactly why you want them and why some bidders will resist.
12. What does the training deliverable consist of, and how do you verify it worked?
"We'll conduct training sessions" is not an answer. A good answer describes system-specific sessions led by someone who understands the sequences, recorded and indexed, with a systems manual that a facilities engineer can actually navigate, and some form of verification that the operators can explain the systems afterward.
Two things to put in the contract
Beyond the questions, two contract terms do more work than everything else combined:
Tie final payment to specific artifacts, not to a report. List them: test scripts derived from approved sequences with recorded values; issues log with documented CxA retest of every closed item; trend logs of specified duration; systems manual; training records. Retain a meaningful percentage until they're delivered and accepted.
Require the CxA to be engaged by you, not by anyone else on the project. If you take one thing from this entire site, take that one.
And one thing about price
If you receive three proposals and one is dramatically lower, the correct response is not to assume it's a bargain and it's also not to assume it's junk. The correct response is to ask questions 2, 4 and 5 and let the documents settle it.
Sometimes the cheap one is a small firm that runs lean and does excellent work. It happens. But you will find out in twenty minutes of document review, and if you don't do that review, you are buying on price alone in a market where price and quality have almost no relationship. That's not procurement. That's a raffle.