Matt Adams is president of The Adams Consulting Group, Atlanta, Georgia. He can be reached at matt@adams-grp.com. Mark Wantage is facilities construction support and maintenance administrator, Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC), Columbus, Ohio. He can be reached at mark.wantage@osfc.state.oh.us.  This is his first article for Facilities Manager.

The state of Ohio embarked on a program several years ago to improve the quality of its school district facilities. This huge program will potentially impact each of the 680 school districts in the state as well as thousands of individual structures. The Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC) was created to oversee and manage this effort. Industry best practices are the rule of law at OSFC; this includes all the disciplines associated with stewardship of assets after construction is finished. While the business of planning, designing, and constructing buildings has been highly streamlined at OSFC, hand-off to the districts is now also being radically improved—mostly because of commissioning. Mark Wantage is in charge of integrating construction with long-term maintenance. His first initiative was to introduce best practice commissioning of the newly constructed or renovated district facilities. This effort provides a ideal case study for our industry.

OSFC school districts are required to have a fully developed and commission-approved maintenance plan in order to complete the closeout process and tap into their maintenance funds set aside for this use. These maintenance plans are often obscured and not implemented due to delays in construction and to new systems that did not perform.

A majority of the OSFC construction projects proceed and are completed without great difficulty. All suffer from transitional issues that require some level of attention. Even on what would be considered a typical project, there is maintenance work being deferred due to concerns that warrantees would be violated or contractors would start blaming their local school district staff for system breakdowns.

Control systems typically are not fully installed by the end of the construction project. There are many reasons for this to occur. The control systems that are in place are not fully utilized by the maintenance staff primarily because of insufficient training or training that occurred using a system that was not fully operational.

In both cases the maintenance staff could never know what they did not know.

There are buildings where the HVAC system did not work, where noise level, technology, and energy consumption were all issues. Project closeouts were delayed and solutions were often times difficult to achieve. When the maintenance plan was delivered, it was overshadowed by ongoing construction problems.

At OSFC there is in place a developed and intricate project planning and management system to facilitate a construction rate value of approximately $2 million dollars a day. It is a large, geographically widespread and long-term process that includes within its scope construction managers, multiple prime contractors, and the individual school districts throughout Ohio. It is this perspective that has allowed the school district personnel to see the gaps in the construction process. Patterns developed that showed there were issues that required special attention. A plan for early intervention was necessary to effect a change.

In 2004, the Ohio School Facilities Commission engaged third-party commissioning as a tool to affect both the construction process and the postconstruction operational issues faced by the owner—the school district. Primary commissioning focuses are the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and controls systems of a building. Currently, there are eight school construction projects that have added commissioning to their construction process. The buildings range from 50,000-square feet to 345,000-square feet, and the largest project to date is the 609,000-square feet, seven-building Mad River project. A majority of the projects have been commissioned at the end of construction or postoccupancy.

During the commissioning process, it was discovered that the first and most common complaint from a new building owner is that the HVAC system is not working effectively. Referring to the eight OSFC commissioning projects; they are correct. Mechanical and control systems were not completed, were installed incorrectly, or were not functioning. In some cases the test and balance report required re-inspection due to discrepancies found during commissioning activities.

Commissioning Issues Raised

School A

1+ years postoccupancy with temperature, humidity control, and general HVAC issues along with freezing of coils.

•  Two AHU hot and cold lines reversed at the unit.
• High air velocities pulling filters from frame.
• Three heat wheels not functioning.
• Controls installation not complete.
• Heat pump controls not to the designed intent.
• A return air humidistat installed in the supply plenum.
• Cooling tower temperature sensors not properly installed.
• Serious issues with the system air and water balance.
• Cooling tower sump could not be drained.

School B

1+ years postoccupancy with humidity and temperature control problems and mold development concerns.

• Thirty-seven of 45 unit ventilators had problems.
• Fifteen with outside air damper linkage loose or disconnected most full open.
• Nine with defective hot water valves.
• Seven of the three-way valves were plumed in backwards.
• Four of the nine valves had been replaced during the warranty period by the original contractor.

School C

Under construction:

• Commissioning shed light and attention to the fact that the controls contractor was falling behind. As a result, the construction team and the contractor were able to address the issue along with increasing their effort and oversight.
• The maintenance staff is working with the commissioning agent allowing them to participate as a more effective member of the construction team and learn more of the systems and controls operations.

The combination of finger pointing and the onus placed upon the owner to define the problem left the maintenance staff overwhelmed. As a result, coils were fouled due to the filter problem. What filters were there, were not changed. The heat wheels were damaged, coils were freezing in the winter, and systems generally ran uncontrolled, leaving students and staff uncomfortable. The maintenance staff had no time for planning or preventative maintenance because they had to deal with the complaints and the system failures. As a result, there were substantial costs in terms of capital equipment, energy consumption, and building conditions. The blame was first focused on the construction and the contractors, but over time, it began to taint the reputation of the maintenance staff and school administration.

In the case of School B, the maintenance supervisor worked the systems to the best of his abilities. He utilized his resources and learned as much as he could in order to operate the systems properly to control the room conditions. Understaffed, the best he could do was maintain the status quo for a failing operation. He was unable to fully implement his maintenance plan due to the fires he had to put out that were left from the project. As time passed, the lore grew and the Superintendent and School Board grew less satisfied. This is not a situation conducive to asking for more staff.

The third example is of a construction project that has engaged commissioning midway through the timeline. Commissioning allowed the contractors to make changes that might have delayed the project at final closeout and caused additional problems in the future. These issues are engaged in-process; therefore, the contractors can effect changes while they are still mobilized. When the project is turned over to the owner, the expectations are that all the systems will be operating as the design intended. The maintenance staff, as part of the construction process and with the requisite training and practical experience gained by shadowing the commissioning authority, is better prepared to take on the general operations and maintenance without having to be overwhelmed by lingering construction problems.

School D

End construction commissioning near completion:

• General controls issues of concern and many minor mechanical issues were discovered and corrected.
• Training was an issue and as a result was augmented.

The contractors and engineers were professional and worked with the commissioning team to resolve problems as they occurred. The result is a project that is better able to maintain their timeline. The maintenance staff became more involved with the project as a result of the commissioning process and they are now better equipped to maintain their systems.

In most cases, the construction team is professional and makes the building corrections necessary and effectively. These contractors, engineers, and architects have begun to view commissioning as a useful tool not just to catch problems early when they are less expensive to fix, but also as a validation that they have done their job and have performed well for the owner. In other cases, the commissioning is a clear unemotional collation of problems that must be answered. The construction team uses this tool to plan a course of action. The “Owners” (School District) of commissioned projects are first relieved that there is an effort to help solve the existing problems and then are newly excited about their new facilities.

The maintenance staff in these schools, as a rule, is first reluctant and then embraces the commissioning process. Those schools with long-standing problems are excited to begin to focus on establishing a routine maintenance program. The maintenance staffs that are involved with commissioning during the construction process are relieved to have an advocate that they can work with and because of that, most take the opportunity to learn the new systems and operations. All staff can then feel more confident about their understanding of the facility and what is needed to properly maintain it into the future.