Commissioning-Return on Investment

[gilla]

Dear Braintrust,

My company has recently presented and partially sold an owner, on commissioning services, that is planning to build a major hotel/convention center. I say partially because the owner's "Facilities Group" understands the need because they can appreciate the many past headaches from designing and starting up systems that had not been commissioned. The owner of course is limited on its funding to implement a full commissioning program. This is mainly because the CFO and his staff do not see the value and may feel that it is an extra layer of consultants.

My question is:

Does anyone know of an authoritative source or recent study that demonstrates the value of commissioining?

Also, the specifics of how commissioning (if started during the design phase) can influence capital construction costs and also later O&M costs in a new facility will be appreciated.

Thanks as always.

 

[TBP]

The sooner it gets put into service, the sooner the payback starts. But, if it's not commissioned, how does anyone know if it works properly? How do you tell if there was a design or construction goof? There's no way to know. The commissioning cost can be identified up-front, as in your arrangement, or dumped on operations & maintenance.

It also always looks cheaper to the financial-types to dump "mostly finished" project onto the O & M crew - "We're paying them anyway..." After all, it's a "brand new" installation. How much can be wrong with it? Hmmm...low bid design outfit, low bid contractor working under pressure to meet unrealistic construction schedule, using low bid material suppliers - what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

For major project with no commissioning - all the weekend/late night calls for at least the first couple of months should be funneled through the CFO's cell phone. Share the joy.

 

[MintJulep]

The problem is that the financial benefit of a proper commissioning effort is avoided future costs.

 

[TBP]

MintJulep - So you don't have a good answer either?

 

[MintJulep]

TBP,

If the schedule is such that the building opens during the heating season, just make sure that a condensate drain will overflow above the CFO's office as soon as cooling season starts. This nicely illustrates the concept of "avoided future cost" for him, and the next project will have a commissioning budget.

But seriously, it is a risk assessment exercise. Put together some what-ifs.

What if the chiller craps out the first hot day of the summer and you need to close the office? How much would that cost?

What if all the servers overheat and shut down?

 

[HVAC68]

Do some smart marketing to sell your services. I suppose your company has been in this field for some time now. If yes, then you can get some good references from your past customers. Get your prospective client to talk to your past clients. Also, scout and find out in the market, if there are other plants which were not commissioned professionally. Call it negative marketing or whatever, get those references of unhappy clients too who did not utilise a professional commissioning agency. Hopefully, this should do the trick.

On top of all these, since you have "partially" sold your idea, get the Facilities Management guys to push your case through.

Good luck.

HVAC68

 

[gilla]

Thanks for the input! It appears that a documented source, study, or report is hard to find.

 

[friartuck]

Gilla

one simple way to look at the problem is to assume that the system is not perfectly commissioned. Lets assume that it is over duty by as little as 10%.

Thats not an unreasonable amount.

Now if we know the operating costs of a building of the type and size you are looking at, then you will be wasting 10% of the value.

i.e. if you are looking at an energy cost per year of 100000, then 10000 will be wasted.

I know its over simplified but unless you can closely analyse all aspects, its the best you can do.

Over ventilating a building is horrendously expensive, especially if you are air conditioning it. Over heating or over cooling by poor temperature control is equally as wasteful.

Not adjusting belt drives on AHU plant and belt driven pumps is a sure way of running up high electricity bills.

I would say it is better to pay now than suffer long term.



Friar Tuck of Sherwood

 

[MintJulep]

The article regarding air handlers in this month's HPAC magazine had some interesting cases of improperly commissioned equipment. No hard money figures, but illustrated the types of things that can get overlooked.

 

[jsummerfield]

The amount of commissioning varies due to differing process equipment complexities. Some equipment can be installed then placed in service with minimal testing and no commissioning. By an air-compressor from Sears, read the safety chapter of the manual, plug it in and run it. At a hotel you will be dealing with the HVAC and perhaps some standby generators, etc. These may not justify extensive commissioning as compared to a gas-turbine driven compressor package. Typically, the gas turbine and supplers will require extensive lube-oil or seal-oil flushing and controls commissioning before they hand over the keys.

John

 

[MintJulep]

Some equipment can be installed then placed in service with minimal testing and no commissioning

In fact all equipment can be installed and place into service with no testing or commissioning. Unfortuantely this happens far too frequently.

The problem is that such an approach does not verify that the equipment is operating correctly, or as intended by the designer.

In your example of the air compressor, you neglected to put oil into the crankcase. The compressor may or may not be oil-less, and if oil is required, that critical instruction may or may not appear in the safety section of the manual.

Complex systems are often made up of a large number of very simple pieces of equipment. It's the interfaces that introduce the challenges.

To expand on the air compressor example a bit: Imagine the compressor is the air supply for a complex pneumatic control circuit. Pipe the compresser up, add oil, plug it in, turn it on. Copressor starts and runs, and eventually turns off when the pressure gets to the cut-off set point. If the istaller is feeling especially consiencious he may even crack the drain valve to check that it turns back on as the pressure falls.

Comissioning of the compressor is done, right?

Nope, because somewhere in the system there is a component that stops working as needed if the pressure drops below 120 psig. You haven't checked the cut-in pressure of the compressor yet, but now that you've checked, it turns out to be 121 psi. So now everything is fine, right?

Nope. Its 121 psig cut-in today. Tomorrow it might be cold, and the grease in the switch will be a little more viscous and the compressor won't cut-in until the pressure drops to 118 psig. Now your system stops working.

Of course, by the time the maintenance guy gets there, it has warmed up a bit, and now everythig appears to be working fine.

This is the sort of thing that a well designed and executed comissioning program will catch. Of course not all commissioning programs are well designed and executed...

 

[HVAC68]

Right MintJulep - We are not talking about pieces of equipment individually, but a system as a whole. Generally, each piece of equipment may be commissioned pretty much without difficulty, but balancing the entire system is a professional job and needs to be done properly to get what is intended of the design.

For example, water balancing for large systems can be a nightmare.

HVAC68

 

[ChasBean1]

Gilla,

There's no fixed answer to your question. Using a good CA could pay the commissioning fee ten-fold or could be a loss to the project. This depends on what they find on a project and how they perform.

I like to think it's worth it because at the end of every project the design team is out of money and trying to get out, the ATC contractor is doing as little as possible, and the TAB contractor provides useless information except that design cfm and GPM meets actual cfm and GPM. Suddenly the poor bastards that need to keep the building have O&Ms and basic paperwork that tell them everything's fine when it's not. It's a huge issue with me (but a topic for another day) that the commissioning agent is a documentation weenie when all the closeout documentation provides all that useless crap... The real need is for better engineering and technical support and reporting at the end of a project...

Now I've gone overboard (pretty passionate about this, as you can see).

CB
out
krchhh

 

[lilliput1]

See SMACNA HVAC Systems Comissioning Manual
Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National
Association, Inc.
4201 Lafayette Center Drive
Chantilly, VA 22021

Note also that LEED Certification for Green Buildings require Fundamental Commissioning to be performed. An additional Credit is givent for Additional Commissioning.

 

[gilla]

Thanks for everyones input.

My client liked the comment that their facility will be 1.5 Million SQFT and that a conservative energy budget per year is $2/SQFT. Therefore if commissioning, by virtue of documenting the goal of reaching the system design intent, can save 10% of this energy budget then our fees have a decent ROI.

 

[MarauderX]

http://www.usgbc.org

Green building council has much on the value of commisioning, and I would support it in any project. My rule of thumb is ~year payback for most systems as compared to having none.

John Peterson

http://www.wba-arch.com