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Recommissioning (RCx) Guide for Building Owners and Managers

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Chapter 1 - Building Performance as a Business Strategy

Recommissioning as Part of Your Business Strategy

Recommissioning can benefit a building owner in a number of ways:

Reduce utility costs. Through recommissioning, whole-building energy use may be reduced by an average of 5% to 15%. In some cases, annual savings of as much as 30% are possible.⁹
Protect or enhance property value. Reducing operating costs helps to maintain high occupancy rates, reduces tenant turnover, and enables an owner to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Protect against future liability. A building's indoor environmental quality affects the health, comfort, and productivity of its occupants and ranges from mildly inconvenient to very serious. Recommissioning can help identify and address problems that can lead to future liability.
Reduce repair and replacement cost. Recommissioning improves system performance, increases equipment life, and reduces the need for repairs, which can save money and result in fewer comfort complaints.
Increase building's energy performance efficiency. More and more tenants are becoming concerned about environmental issues and how their work place measures up. Companies that adopt energy performance goals are increasingly receiving public recognition and positive press coverage.

Putting the "O" in O&M

Preventive and predictive maintenance programs, out of necessity, focus on component by component care and seldom include comprehensive investigation of how systems operate together. Recommissioning goes beyond the scheduled maintenance of a building to address the "O" in O&M by providing a thorough assessment of the operation of mechanical equipment, lighting, and related controls to improve how the building operates as an integrated system.

Recommissioning enhances a preventive maintenance program by including methods for ensuring that operating improvements remain functioning as intended. For buildings that do not have an active preventive maintenance program, recommissioning can be a key element in re-establishing control over the building's maintenance processes and procedures.

Recommissioning has to be distinguished from a traditional energy audit. As shown in the following Table 2 and Table 3, the primary focus of recommissioning is to identify O&M improvements leading to energy cost savings that are relatively fast and inexpensive to implement.

Table 2: Recommissioning vs energy audit primary focus
Service	Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Improvements	No-Cost / Low-Cost Savings Opportunities	Capital Retrofit Savings Opportunities
Recommissioning (RCx)	Primary	Primary	Secondary
Energy Audit	Secondary	Primary	Primary

Table 3: Differences between an energy audit and an O&M assessment
Energy Audit	O&M Assessment
Emphasizes investigating existing building systems for equipment replacement (retrofit) opportunities leading to energy cost savings	Emphasizes investigating existing building systems to identify low-cost O&M improvements leading to energy cost savings
Seldom includes functional testing of present building systems	Generally includes some degree of functional testing of present building systems
Generally performed by an outside consultant	Generally performed by an outside consultant
May include building simulation models	Rarely includes building simulation models
Results in a list of energy conservation retrofit measures	Results in a master list of O&M improvements
Typical recommendations are time consuming and expensive to implement	Typical recommendations are fast and inexpensive to implement
Typical projects provide attractive rates of return sometimes more than 30% with a payback often greater than three years	Typical paybacks are estimated at less than two years and often less than one year
Generally requires an outside contractor to implement equipment replacements	In-house staff can often implement many O&M improvements

Adapted from: PECI. “Operation and Maintenance Assessments – A Best Practice for Energy-Efficient Building Operations”, O&M Best Practices Series, funded by the US EPA and US DOE, September 1999.

Recommissioning in Canada

Recommissioning (RCx) is underutilized in Canada. Recently, however it has been pro¬moted by Natural Resources Canada via capacity-building activities, the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) through a sponsored building certification program, and also by some Canadian utilities as a conservation program to reduce energy consump¬tion in buildings and reduce peak demand.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)

The NRCan’s CanmetENERGYdevelops a national RCx program to build RCx know¬ledge and expertise in Canada. It helps deploy training and provide tools for efficient and cost-effective RCx implementation. CanmetENERGYworks in collaboration with the Office of Energy Efficiency (OEE) under the ecoENERGYfor Buildings Program of Natural Resources Canada.

Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)

CaGBCaccelerates the design and construction of green buildings in Canada and includes representatives from different segments of the design and building industry. In early 2008, CaGBCupdated the LEED^®Canada Green Building Rating System¹⁰ to address existing as well as new buildings of all types. A CaGBCtaskforce is developing terms of reference and a timeline for the potential adaptation of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB^TM) for the Canadian market.

The LEED-EB^TM rating system has 4 certification levels: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Cer¬tified. Existing buildings seeking LEED-EB^TMcertification can receive points based on the energy performance. Implementing an RCx process will help achieve the min¬imum performance rating required by LEED^TM. At the time of this writing, more than 3,000 Canadian practitioners from all sectors of the industry are now LEED accredited professionals, and around 200 buildings in Canada are registered with the CaGBC.

Canadian Utilities

Some Canadian utilities have formally adopted RCx programs. Manitoba Hydro launched its program in 2006 and BCHydro ramped up its RCx program in early 2008. Other utilities in Ontario are about to do the same by introducing their own RCx programs. Hydro Québec is currently running a pilot project to assess client interest in and bene¬fits from the RCx process. The RCx programs offered by Canadian utilities are targeting large conventional buildings where the energy bills are the highest. It is expected that other Canadian utilities will also deploy RCx programs in the coming years.

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⁹ Haasl, Tudi, Robert Bahl, E.J. Hilts, and David Sellers. “Appropriate Use of Third Parties in the Existing Building Commissioning Process – An In-house Approach to Retrocommissioning.” World Energy Engineering Congress, 2004.

¹⁰ LEED is a series of green building rating systems developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) that goes beyond energy performance to include additional sustainability measures. It recognizes buildings where environmental best practices have been implemented into operations. There are distinct rating systems for new construction (LEED- NC™), existing buildings (LEED-EB™), and several other situations. LEED-EBTM is applicable to building operations, processes, system upgrades, and minor space changes, and can be used by buildings new to LEED certification, or as a recertification vehicle for buildings that have previously achieved a LEED rating. LEED-NC™ requirement for commissioning has helped the building industry realize the importance of both commissioning of new buildings and ongoing commissioning of existing buildings.

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