KBPE

7778 Seward Park Ave S
Seattle, WA 98118
Voice 206 935 5288
Fax 206 935 5287
General information: info@kbpe.net
Owner Kent Barber: kbarber@kbep.net

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Kent Barber Professional Biography

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KBPE Approach

KBPE New Building Commissioning Philosophy

KBPE provides custom commissioning services. Having pioneered and participated in many different commissioning approaches, our experienced staff has the expertise to tailor a commissioning process to the individual needs of each project and owner. We find that the interests of many clients are well served with a customized version of a process that we've developed through years of in-the-trenches commissioning. This process has proven to be very successful. However, we expect to revise and customize it as more becomes known to us regarding the needs of specific projects.

We've found that the key to smooth and successful project commissioning lies in successfully integrating the commissioning process into the design/construction process, rather than approaching it as one more thing to wrestle with at the end of the project. To achieve this it is essential to establish and maintain a functioning team. This begins early in the design phase with the commissioning agent, the owner and the design team. A cooperative construction phase commissioning team follows with the support of understandable, biddable and enforceable commissioning specifications. It is essential that these specifications be fairly and consistently enforced. Key elements of our approach are:

• Clearly documenting the owner's project requirements, and tracking their implementation throughout the project. This provides a commissioning baseline that facilitates common understanding and teamwork among the owner, design team and commissioning consultants. The documented owner's project requirements should also be made available to the construction team.
• Clearly documenting the designer's functional intent: Project plans and specifications focus on construction materials and methods, often without clearly communicating how the final product is supposed to function. And yet, full knowledge of the designer's functional intent is critical information for contractors and commissioning professionals tasked with successfully implementing and commissioning a project. Documenting the designer's functional intent early in design also provides the designer, owner, and commissioning professional with a tool to verify that the design goals are consistent with the owner's functional requirements.
• Carefully integrating the commissioning specifications into the related sections of the specifications, as well as providing clearly written commissioning-specific sections. We've found that this makes commissioning more biddable for the contractor, and more easily enforceable for the owner, in comparison to relying on totally separate commissioning specifications.
• Documenting the important details of systems operation at an early stage. In order to successfully implement and commission a project it is critical for the owner, designer, contractor and commissioning professional to have a common understanding of how the functional requirements of the design will be implemented. For HVAC systems, this means understanding the control logic that will be used to implement the specified sequences of operation. We prefer to see the control logic specified by the design engineer as a part of the project plans and specifications. This can be done effectively using logic diagrams or simple logic statements. Specifying the control logic in the bid documents has several advantages:
1. It gives the design engineers more control over the functional details and ultimate performance of the systems they have designed
2. It further clarifies the designer's functional intent for the contractors and the commissioning professional
3. It provides enough information during the design phase to allow fully developed draft Functional Performance Test procedures (FPT's) to be included in the bid documents. Including the FPT's in the bid documents significantly facilitates bidding and enforcing the commissioning functional testing process.
• Another alternative is to specify a requirement for the DDC contractor to submit the control logic documentation as a part of their shop drawing submittal. The DDC logic submittal review is used to verify that the sequences of operation will be implemented in full accordance with the designer's functional intent. The accepted submittal becomes the basis for the function performance test procedures. When this approach is taken the actual FPT procedures cannot be included in the bid documents. Instead, the commissioning spec must clearly identify each function that will be tested and what the corresponding acceptance criteria will be. Various combinations of specifying control logic and performing control logic submittal reviews may also be effective.
• Specifying preliminary Functional Performance Test (FPT) procedures in the bid documents; then refining and coordinating them with the contractors so that the FPT's can be integrated into the contractor's startup and quality assurance program. FPT's for all systems and equipment are performed by the contractors with the guidance and consultation of the Commissioning Agent (CA). The contractor submits all FPT data forms for the CA review. The CA witnesses the performance of the FPTs for all unique and critical equipment and systems, and for an agreed upon sampling of the less critical ones. This facilitates a cost effective team approach to the FPT process.
• Requiring the General Contractor to provide a Commissioning Coordinator: KBPE is proud of our commissioning leadership and team building skills. Typically, however, the Commissioning Agent (CA) has no contractual authority to schedule and coordinate the various subcontractors; therefore a more effective commissioning team can be built by forming a commissioning management partnership with the General Contractor (GC). The CA, who is accountable directly to the owner, provides the technical commissioning knowledge and oversight; while the GC provides a commissioning coordinator to manage the day to day commissioning activities being performed by the subs. We've found that having a good commissioning manager on the contracting team is more cost effective than requiring the contractor to provide another technically skilled commissioning professional, or test engineer, that is not focused on onsite resource management. Good MEP coordinators can sometimes do an excellent job as CC.