After working with the building owner to develop the owner’s project requirements (OPR) document for a project, one of the first activities for a commissioning professional is conducting third-party reviews of the design team’s work. Commissioning design reviews focus on, but are not limited to, compliance with the OPR, design clarity, accessibility and maintainability, O&M training and documentation requirements, and the ability to test and validate system operation.
Commissioning professionals document their comments in a format intended to be easy and practical for the design team to manage. Historically, the most common format has been a table with a comment or question on each row and a column for the design team’s responses. The use of online databases for documenting, responding to, and tracking comments is becoming more common. Web-based, collaborative design document development and review platforms are also popular, especially for large projects. In the latter, everyone on the project team, including the commissioning professional, inserts comments directly into the drawings and specifications.