In two previous "Getting it Right" columns, I addressed the differences between traditional quality control and commissioning (December 1999 and May 2002). The crux of the issue is that quality control is focused on equipment and commissioning is focused on systems, i.e., groupings of individual pieces of equipment designed to dynamically operate together.
We talk a lot about "systems" in the commissioning world, but I think we sometimes gloss over the word too quickly. One of the key aspects of commissioning is being able to define the systems to be commissioned in a manner that will achieve comprehensive performance verification as efficiently as practical.