Building Energy Resilience

We often hear a question that goes something like this from building owners: “Why do I need an independent design review? I hire the best architects and engineers.” It’s a reasonable question — asked so often in my opinion because those of us in the architecture, engineering and construction industries have done such a poor job answering.

The building commissioning design review process provides opportunities to see how HVAC designers apply efficiency to pumping systems. There are outstanding designs and, unfortunately, some not so excellent applications.

Fun and profit can come in unexpected ways to energy efficiency engineers. A couple of months ago while at a jobsite conducting central air handler control testing, there was the inevitable wait-around time. So I stopped to take a look at a central heating hot water plant we commissioned a couple of years ago. It’s a basic system - an all-primary layout with two boilers and variable flow 7.5 horsepower pumps, controlled by a piping differential pressure (DP) control sensor located in a remote section of the distribution piping. The plant serves a few dozen single duct VAV box reheat coils. A pretty typical system.

A recent Test and Balance (T&B) report for a central air handler made me really question the value of some of our current T&B practices. The system was a conventional variable air volume (VAV) air handler with a return air fan and single duct reheat terminal VAV boxes. The purpose of the T&B process is to adjust and record air handler performance to achieve the specified maximum flow rates.

As an industry, we provide building operators with efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems as well as powerful building management control systems. Then we expect the operators to run the high-tech HVAC equipment efficiently.

One of the biggest challenges in conducting a building commissioning design review is to get the designer to seriously consider a design review suggestion. Designers will naturally be defensive, as would any of us. Having been an HVAC designer myself, I know one of the designer’s biggest fears is seeing comments that make the designer “look bad” to the client (building owner).

We often hear a question that goes something like this from building owners: “Why do I need an independent design review? I hire the best architects and engineers.” It’s a reasonable question — asked so often in my opinion because those of us in the architecture, engineering and construction industries have done such a poor job answering.