June 14, 2011

Canadian Standards Association Z320 commissioning standard brings needed ‘holistic’ approach

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

The recently minted national standard on building commissioning provides a sorely needed “holistic” approach in this sphere, says professional engineer Bill Carson.

The CSA Z320 standard offers guidelines for the commissioning of buildings and related building systems. It applies to both new construction and renovations of existing buildings or facilities.

The adoption of a standardized approach “is something the industry as a whole needs to embrace,” Carson told a recent NORR Ltd.-sponsored seminar in Toronto. “Current practices addressing testing and commissioning of systems are fragmented.”

Building commissioning is the process of ensuring that all systems, including the mechanical, electrical, control and integration, architectural, vertical and horizontal transportation are operating as intended.

The standard is intended to provide a comprehensive, integrated and coherent process for achieving and documenting the optimal performance of a complete building and its major systems to meet the basis of design and the operational requirements of the owner.

Carson, commissioning coordinator at The Mitchell Partnership, a Toronto mechanical engineering firm, chaired the 28-member technical committee that played a pivotal role in development of the standard.

He also headed up the controls and integration technical sub-committee.

Carson told the seminar that development of the standard was prompted by the need for a holistic approach to commissioning a facility in its entirety.

“There are so many (different) processes out there,” he said. “There are some good and not-so-good processes. We need to ensure that we deliver a building in a fully operational manner.”

Intended users of the standard include those who perform technical functions associated with major building systems as well as those who have an interest in building safety and related quality assurance.

The standard also includes nine non-mandatory annexes to provide further explanatory information, with sections on re-commissioning and retro-commissioning.

To support the standard’s use, NRCan’s office of energy efficiency funded development of a web-based electronic checksheet application.

“I think this is going to be the smartest such standard in the world,” Carson said. “I think it is going to get a lot of play.”

Development of the standard was led by the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada. In 2006, the association connected with the CSA Standards to embark on the project.

“This was no easy task,” said CSA project manager Vanessa Mitchell. Part of her role was to ensure that the CSA-accredited “consensus “process was maintained throughout development of the standard.

In all, the Z320 technical committee and five subcommittees met 12 times over a two-year time frame beginning in 2008.

A critical first step was reaching agreement on a definition of building commissioning “so everyone was on the same page,” said Domenic Bonavota, vice-president of Mulvey + Banani International Inc. and principal in charge of the firm’s commissioning department. He chaired the Z320 electrical subcommittee.

CSA standards, which are voluntary until referenced in legislation, are updated every five years.

“This is a living document,” said architect David Craddock, a project manager at NORR and president-elect of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada who served as the architectural profession’s representative on the Z-320 committee.

Development was funded by a consortium of stakeholders which included the mechanical contractors’ association and various affiliates, the Canadian Construction Association, Defence Construction Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada, The Mitchell Partnership and Mulvey + Banani.

Print | Comment