Recommissioning (RCx) Guide for Building Owners and Managers

Chapter 1 - Building Performance as a Business Strategy

Recommissioning Can Help

Recommissioning is a collaborative process that looks at how and why a building's systems are operated and maintained as they are, and then identifies ways to improve overall building performance. As a process, rather than a set of prescriptive measures, recommissioning adapts to meet the specific needs of each building owner. Recommissioning plays an important role in addressing whole building performance. The whole building perspective looks at buildings as integrated systems, rather than a set of individual components.⁷

Since occupant comfort complaints and high energy use can often go hand-in-hand, recommissioning can help to correct both. Specifically, recommissioning: 

• Improves the building's overall performance by optimizing energy efficient design features and directly addressing equipment performance and system integration issues
• Ensures that building staff have the knowledge and documentation needed to operate and maintain the building
• Evaluates the building's environmental quality to reduce occupant complaints by optimizing existing systems for current loads and configuration

Optimum building performance can be maintained over time following recommissioning through persistence strategies such as ongoing commissioning.

In ongoing commissioning,⁸ monitoring equipment and trending software is left in place to allow for continuous tracking, and the scheduled maintenance activities are enhanced to include operational procedures. For ongoing commissioning to be highly effective, the building owner must retain high quality staff or service contractors that are trained and have the time and budget to not only gather and analyse data, but also to implement the solutions that come out of the analysis. Recommissioning is normally done every 3 to 5 years depending on ongoing commissioning rigor, or whenever the building experiences a significant change in use (see Figure 1).

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⁷ See the US-EPA Guide related case study "Target Retrocommissioning Program" in Appendix G
⁸ Ongoing commissioning is an iterative process of recommissioning actions that ensure persistence between recommissioning rounds