Commissioning of New Schools:A State Funded Study of the Costs and Benefits

摘要

Industry insiders know intuitively that commissioning benefits exceed the costs.Anecdotal evidence supports this intuition. However, there is little concrete documentation ofthe benefits. In 2003, the State of Texas funded a study of the costs and benefits ofcommissioning of new school facilities. The study involves close investigation of two schools:one school that was commissioned, and a similar school that was not commissioned. Thecomplete study will include modeling and monitoring of both buildings to evaluate energysavings, as well as detailed interviews, surveys, and audits. It will also looks at impacts on thebuilding's design, construction and turnover processes, as well as improvements in operationsand maintenance, and other aspects of building acceptability. Although the study includes onlytwo buildings, the richness of the data collection and the analysis will make this a unique studywith results that will shed light not just on the magnitude of the savings, but on the nature of thebenefits and on the appropriateness of the commissioning process.This paper reports on early findings of the study. It provides a detailed description of themethodology used to document the benefits, since the industry is presently searching for moreappropriate methodologies. It presents a set of metrics for evaluating the performance of thebaseline school (to be used in the future for comparison with the commissioned school). Thepaper also shares the experiences from the early design stages of the commissioning project andwhat lessons have so far been learned to benefit other Texas schools engaging in commissioning.