There are some building types and/or organizations that are nearly always undergoing some sort of facility upgrade, modification, and/or expansion to accommodate evolving needs.

Distributing water on a large scale has been a challenge that the world has tackled for decades.

Engineering departments in today’s health care environment are tasked with an ever-growing list of responsibilities, such as emergency readiness, PMs, reactive maintenance, ensuring regulatory compliance, managing infection control, maintaining life cycle budgets, managing utility spend, and the list goes on.

This is a story about two new construction commissioning projects with similar challenges and as-yet unwritten endings. 

Last month’s column introduced the concept of giving “too much control” to the building operators through the BAS graphic.

Overby-Sheppard Elementary in Richmond, Virginia, needed more than an HVAC upgrade, but with tight budgets and minimal state funding, it didn’t seem likely. The 40-year-old building needed a full overhaul to provide students with a healthier, distraction-free environment.

The idea for this month’s topic was hatched during a retro-commissioning project, but it offers lessons to be applied to new construction commissioning.

BOSTON — Key energy issues, such as energy management, efficiency, automation, and more, took center stage as the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) presented its AEE East Energy Conference & Expo, March 20-21 in Boston.

Today’s data centers handle an increasing volume of global digital communication traffic compared to their predecessors of yesteryear. The computers and digital devices that provide streaming video, Internet of Things (IoT) data, business communications, etc. are driving the growth of new data centers to handle this traffic.

Much has been written about systems’ readiness for functional performance testing at the end of construction, and pre-functional checklists have become common elements of the commissioning process.