The Commissioning Process for Existing Buildings

Are you looking to improve the performance and comfort of your buildings? Learn how to apply the principles of the commissioning process (CxP) to existing buildings to improve productivity, indoor air quality, maintainability, operability, and energy efficiency.

• Building owners and developers 
• Facility managers 
• Commissioning authorities 
• Federal project managers 
• Architects 
• Engineers 
• Construction managers 
• Project managers and planners 
• Building operation and maintenance staff 
• Contractors

This course is one of the specialized-topic offerings designed to complement The Commissioning Process for Delivering Quality Constructed Projects course. Completion of this course, in combination with The Commissioning Process for Delivering Quality Constructed Projects, fulfills the education/training requirements of the UW Commissioning Provider certifications.

This course has been approved for 14 LU | HSW AIA credits.

Existing Building Commissioning Guidelines

• ASHRAE Guideline 0.2
• BCA and California Commissioning Guidelines
• Comparison to new construction commissioning
• Terminology and key concepts

Overview of Existing Building Commissioning

• Historical benefits and cost
• The EBCx team
• The EBCx process with specific tasks and details

EBCx Process in Action with Case Studies

• Planning phase: key drivers, prep work, and identifying opportunities
• Investigation phase: field testing, energy analysis
• Implementation phase: approaches and best practices

Monitoring Based Commissioning

• What MBCx is and isn't
• How is it different from retro-commissioning and re-commissioning?
• Means of implementing, metrics , and tools

Optimizing Control Strategies to Maximize Commercial Building Energy Savings

• The Building Automation System's role in energy use and energy efficiency
• Identify the right energy saving measures to implement (hint - they are controls-based)
• Steps to optimize energy saving control sequences (and pitfalls to avoid)

Persistence

• Justification for a strong O&M program
• Key elements of an effective O&M program 

Robert Austin

Robert Austin, Associate Vice President, Dewberry, holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering and has specialized in Existing Building Commissioning over his entire career. His resume includes execution and management of Existing Building Commissioning projects on a national scale, spanning nearly every vertical market sector. He is an expert in field assessments, controls troubleshooting, energy analysis, measurement and verification, and automated fault detection and diagnostics. He is a member of the Building Commissioning Association.

Ian McIntosh

Dr. Ian McIntosh, PhD, CxM, is a program director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Office of Interdisciplinary Professional Programs (InterPro). He joined the InterPro Facilities and Building Systems team in December 2020 after being a frequent lecturer and course developer for the previous 20 years. His responsibilities include teaching, directing and business development for commissioning certification courses related to project management, existing buildings, and building enclosures. He is also the owner and founder of ianTEACH LLC, which provides innovative and strategic performance-based training and coaching to engineers, architects, construction and facilities management professionals in various sectors of the national building industry.

He is an Accredited Commissioning Process Manager (CxM) with over twenty years of dedicated experience in Total Building Commissioning (a quality process) and has managed numerous energy, commissioning, retro-commissioning, and LEED® commissioning projects throughout the nation. As a Commissioning Provider and Mechanical Engineer, Dr. McIntosh has prepared and led several Owner's Project Requirements (OPR) workshops, written and integrated numerous commissioning specifications, co-invented and implemented electronic bar-coded checklists, system manuals and tracked owner cost savings. He has also executed hands-on in-depth field work, performed functional performance testing of complex HVAC systems/subsystems and coordinated full-scale operation & maintenance (O&M) and user training programs.

Ian holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the City College of the City University of New York (CCNY) and earned his Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the Solar Energy Lab at UW-Madison. He and his wife of 18 years like to spend quality time with their four children.