A very common task incorporated into a commissioning process during the early stages of construction is schedule coordination. The task includes the commissioning provider working with the construction team to ensure activities and milestones of interest to the commissioning process are entered into the master schedule for the project. A list of common items of interest is provided below. Items with * may require separate line items for each system on some projects.
- Cx site observation visits
- Controls point-to-point
- End of dust producing activities
- MEP equipment, systems, and component startup*
- Controls program review, loop tuning, graphics, trends and alarming*
- Testing, adjusting and balancing (TAB)*
- Construction checklists complete*
- Construction team pre-testing*
- Functional performance testing*
- Functional performance retesting
- Training schedule submission
- 100% O&M Manual submission
- Owner training
- Manufacturer warranty dates
This process of schedule coordination is to ensure the team adequately plans for these items of interest and the commissioning process is on their mind throughout, and not an afterthought only to be addressed at the time of functional testing.
I have long griped to my coworkers this is my least favorite task in all of commissioning. This is because I have very few examples of projects where the schedule has been sufficiently updated through this process. We spend far too much time marking up their master schedule with missing items or calling out blatant errors in their schedule. Then we have a meeting to go over the rationale for our requests, trying to convince the project team to comply with their contracted obligations to update their schedule as making these additions is often required by them in the commissioning specification section. On the rare case the team obliges, they rarely hold true to the schedule. There is inadequate margin (or “float” in schedule speak), and the commissioning milestones along the way are never met on time. There is a universal underestimate of how long it takes to sort through the issues that are identified at the end of a project.
I would love to write an article about all the examples of how ignorant many construction schedules often are to the actual construction process, specifically the tasks at the end of the project that bring all these systems together. As fate would have it, though I despise the task of schedule coordination so much, I have been consistently reminded in recent projects why it is important. Thus, I reluctantly find myself writing an article defending the task.
Why it is important
So many of the items of interest to commissioning come at the end of the construction project. If all the float is used up early on, then equipment/systems startup, end-of-project temperature control efforts, TAB and functional testing get stacked on top of each other for a given system, often overlapping with each other. There are acceptable overlaps, for example controls cannot be finalized until TAB determines key setpoints, but generally speaking these are sequential efforts for a given system. But that doesn’t mean they should be planned to occur back-to-back. Let’s explain.
Often, issues are identified during equipment startup that take time to resolve. If the controls contractor tries to get rolling before the startup issues are addressed, they will be required to work around those issues. For example, if they are working on BAS-controlled terminal boxes downstream of a packaged RTU that cannot seem to stay running, it doesn’t exactly make the controls tech’s job easy. There needs to be time in the schedule for addressing issues identified with equipment startup, and the necessity for that time doesn’t go away because all the trades earlier in the projects put the project behind schedule.
Program verification performed by the controls contractors will unearth issues with the programming or input/output devices that will require time to address. Tuning of control loops cannot be complete until the systems are operational. Additionally, graphics may not be able to be finalized until the network is available, which is also an afterthought rarely actively tracked in the master schedule. Configuration of trends and alarms will be performed at this time as well. All these controls efforts often cannot be started until about the same time in the typical project. It takes time for the controls team to work through these tasks. If TAB gets brought in too early, they often require assistance from the controls tech, which takes time away from the controls tech performing their other essential tasks. There needs to be time in the schedule to account for these issues that will need to be worked through with the controls prior to TAB, and the need for that time doesn’t get removed because other trades during earlier stages in the project put the project behind schedule. If not, the quality of work from the controls contractor is diminished as they are being pulled in a thousand directions.
The TAB process also suffers when they are brought in prematurely. If the systems they are balancing are not truly under control or haven’t been allowed to run in auto for a period of time, TAB may be unearthing numerous issues that should have been caught before their arrival. Or they are making suboptimal overrides to the system just to get through their process. All of this makes for an inefficient and possibly ineffective TAB process. If adequate time is not incorporated into the schedule towards the end of the project, the quality of work from the TAB provider is diminished.
Eventually the deadline for completion can no longer be ignored. Immense pressure gets put on the team to confirm they are ready for functional testing. Established protocols are broken. Construction checklists are not filled out, no one will confirm they pre-tested the systems, and a TAB report is not available because (understandably so), they can’t turn it around in 2 hours after finishing their onsite work. We, the commissioning provider, raise these concerns to the owner. The owner acknowledges that it would have been much better for the project to have adhered to the schedule and commissioning process, but this particular project is too far gone, and we need to compromise on the established process just this once. It’s hard to tell your client no when they are desperate to finish the project. Additionally, we may be getting antsy ourselves as it’s not enjoyable working around occupants when functional testing is delayed well into the occupancy phase. This is especially difficult with spaces with access restrictions.
And so, commissioning providers, against our best judgment, oblige the client. Things go poorly. There are so many issues that you certainly don’t feel confident you caught them all. You can feel the pressure being placed on the contractors. In some instances, it is obvious the team is so desperate to finish, that they will only be correcting the issues identified by commissioning provider. If you don’t catch it, they won’t fix it. Clearly, when functional testing occurs prematurely due to all the float in the project schedule being used up by others, the quality of work the commissioning provider provides suffers.
Why functional testing gets compromised
I often get blown off when I express my concerns regarding premature functional testing. I want to provide an analogy to further explain how the functional testing process suffers when we are asked to test prematurely. Imagine your best buddy is overseas on a military deployment, and he puts in an order for the sports car of his dreams and pays some money down up front. Then his deployment gets extended, and he asks you to test drive and pick up the car on his behalf once it arrives at the dealership. He asked you because you are a car nut whom he can trust. You are representing your buddy’s best interest. When you arrive at the dealership, you find the color is wrong, the driver’s door is smashed in, the windshield is cracked, it’s out of gas, and the engine is making some obnoxious rumbling noises. You had arranged with the dealer for this test drive to take no longer than an hour, but it takes 50 minutes just to be able to get into the driver’s seat. Because of this delay, the dealer has to leave work because he too only planned for an hour, thus he cannot assist in demonstrating all the bells and whistles on the dashboard. When driving the car, it seems to accelerate, brake and turn well, but you cannot say for certain as the door is poking into your side, the loud rumbling is very distracting, and the windshield condition is making this drive borderline illegal. The dealer commits to fixing everything you identified, but you have a pit in your stomach that you didn’t identify everything. Your buddy is already heavily invested in the car and needs it when he arrives next week because he has no other means of transportation.
Do you really feel comfortable signing off on this for him? Probably not. This is no different than testing an AHU that it takes the controls tech 15 minutes to troubleshoot how to even get it started, no BAS graphics are present, TAB has not yet been performed on the air system, the humidifier doesn’t work because of an “existing condition” with the domestic water supply, and the serving hot water system is not operational due to its own issues. If this sounds like a stretch, well it is not. The frequency in which commissioning providers get asked to perform their work under such unacceptable conditions is staggeringly high.
Conclusion
Compressing startup, end-of-project controls efforts, TAB and functional testing all because these activities, and the milestones leading up to their execution, were not adequately planned for, greatly diminishes the quality of the project the owner inherits. Controls, TAB, and the commissioning provider’s quality of work suffers. When the extent of the shortcomings become evident during functional testing, the best case for the owner is to conduct retesting. But retesting this late into the game has its consequences. The later issues are identified in a construction process, the exponentially more difficult it is for them to be resolved. Also, the appetite for completing a full retesting, and not just verifying the issues identified-to-date were corrected, is usually pretty low.
What is the root cause of all this chaos? Inadequate planning. Cx milestones on the schedule are not taken seriously. There is ignorance about the level of effort required at the end of the project to bring it all together. I am not saying a construction schedule needs to be rigid, but if taken seriously, the importance of the late activities which bring it altogether will begin to be appreciated. Dwight Eisenhower once said, “plans are nothing, planning is everything.” My best advice to improve the act of planning and mitigating the risk of all this occurring is the following:
- Have honest discussions with the entire project team, during the design phase, about a realistic completion date for the project.
- Include strict language in the commissioning specification for the construction schedule coordination process.
- Ensure owner is present for such coordination and understands the issues with a compressed scheduled at the end of the project.
- Ensure key members are present for such coordination. Equipment startup techs, temperature controls techs and TAB providers need a seat at the table, no one is better suited to provide reasonable estimates for the time it takes them to perform their work and troubleshoot along the way.
- Foster a culture of honest lines of communication. Too often, pressure is placed on contractors to say they are ready for the next guy in line, when they are not. Then the snowball effect starts. Finger pointing runs rampant and trust throughout deteriorates. Establishing such a culture is often out of the commission provider’s control, but you can certainly bring it up to put the team on notice.
I write this article not just for the commissioning providers out there, but for the controls techs and TAB providers who I see consistently overwhelmed after they have been set up for failure due to an unrealistic, and unadhered to schedules.