Commissioning,Automation

Ten years ago, laboratory animal facility owners were among the early adopters to invest in commissioning services for their projects. The reason is that these buildings are more complicated and have a high potential for insufficient system performance, making third-party testing of system operation a priority. This article focuses primarily on the Construction and Acceptance Phase commissioning activities, describing methods important for conclusively achieving the performance required in today’s laboratories.

Those not familiar with the commissioning process may be of the erroneous impression that commissioning occurs after construction is complete, during the Acceptance Phase. Although it is true that extensive effort is spent on functional testing at that time, the importance of design phase commissioning activities to prepare for acceptance cannot be overstated. During the design phase, the commissioning process is planned, documented, and communicated so all parties are prepared for successful system tests. The design and construction documents are extensively reviewed by experienced commissioning engineers to resolve problems before final pricing, when changes are much simpler and inexpensive to make. A commissioning specification clearly defines roles and responsibilities and prepares the project team for commissioning activities, leading to successful turnover of the facility. Finally, a pre-construction phase design intent document provides operational and performance criteria to ensure that a new or renovated laboratory animal facility meet the owner’s project requirements.

Three crucial activities must be communicated during the design phase to ensure optimized facility performance:

1. Thorough Preparation for Commissioning Tests
2. Conclusive Testing Process and Methodology
3. Effectively Achieving Facility Performance

Thorough Preparation for Commissioning Tests
The purpose of commissioning tests is to verify that building systems operate interactively to meet the owner’s project requirements. Preparing for these tests is perhaps the most challenging part of every project, because getting sophisticated systems ready for testing and verified to be working properly and interactively takes tremendous effort.