The Owner’s Project Requirements document (OPR) is a commissioning industry standard. It is the means by which the owner communicates expectations for a new construction or major renovation project. The OPR documents the owner’s acceptance criteria for everything from systems performance (space temperatures, relative humidities, indoor air quality, pressurization, light levels, power quality, reliability, redundancy, energy consumption, measurement and verification, sustainability, exterior enclosure water-tightness, etc.) and O&M documentation and training to design and construction processes, procedures, and schedule expectations.
Ideally, the owner will develop the OPR prior to procuring architectural and engineering design services. This is because it is a valuable document for communicating expectations to the design firms, and it makes everyone’s jobs easier and more efficient to know the acceptance criteria at the beginning of the project. The alternative is to risk wasted effort pursuing objectives that may have been poorly communicated in design meetings and/or criteria deemed acceptable by the design team without confirmation by the owner.