If you arrive in town early or plan an extra day, be sure to visit the new CumberlandPark, a 6.5 acre family friendly recreational space downtown on the Cumberland River. The park, which opened last week, has water features, play structures, an outdoor amphitheater, and many environmentally friendly features including the use of geo-thermal energy, energy efficient lighting and water reuse for irrigation. Use the new free shuttle service, the MusicCityCircuit, to explore downtown and see a great view of the construction on the new MusicCityConventionCenter. You can also take the Music City Circuit to visit the shopping and restaurants in TheGulch, the first LEED for Neighborhood Development (ND) Silver Certified project in Southeast.

After the conference schedule ends on Monday and Tuesday night, there will be free shuttle buses available to transport you into Nashville (about a 10 minute drive). You won’t want to leave Nashville without experiencing historic HonkyTonkRow on Broadway, and maybe picking up a pair of shiny new cowboy boots to take home. Legends, The Stage, Robert’s Western World, and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge have fantastic live country music long into the wee hours of the night and there is no cover charge to worry about.

If you’re looking for something a bit slower paced, but equally “Nashville,” consider getting tickets to a show. Tuesday night, the GrandOleOpry, a weekly country music show celebrating the history and legends of country music, will hosts Ricky Skaggs, Dailey & Vincent, and Edens Edge starting at 7pm. If bluegrass and roots music is your cup of tea, the StationInn has shows at 8pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night.

If you find yourself with a little extra time, get downtown to visit the historic RymanAuditorium, the FristCenterfortheVisualArts, or the CountryMusicHallofFame.

Welcome to Nashville and enjoy all that Music City has to offer!

I will be speaking at the upcoming NCBC meeting in Nashville on May 15th. The organizers and I decided to write a short blog with some ideas to help jump-start conversation and participation. In my keynote I will be talking about some of these ideas in more depth, in particular the idea of invented traditions. Today I thought I would stray a little bit into how we can create embodied traditions that work holistically (mind, body, and environment) to enhance memory and learning.

In order to permanently implement building commissioning practices that provide long-term savings, providers of commissioning services need to harness the processes of institutional culture change. This requires an understanding of how people actually learn new practices. A successful dialogue between the commissioning service provider and their client needs to take place within a space constructed for learning, one which takes into account the recursive nature of the information exchange and how information is processed and acted upon.

One might refer to this as “education” but for the fact that “education” as a concept has come to mean a one-way transfer of information (for example, from me to you) delivered via media that favors visual-verbal learning styles (written directions) and with the responsibility for retention resting with the passive recipient (memorization). How do people learn? How do you learn? Do you remember everything that people tell you? Or do you find yourself referring to notes? Are there complex activities you conduct semi-automatically and precisely? What might those be and how did you acquire those habits?
Running a large building is analogous to running a large ship. Think of the sailing ships of the past, with their crews working together precisely. Their work was embodied, automatic, and mostly learned kinesthetically. Much of the information they deployed in their everyday activities (adjusting and controlling a complex system, responding to weather events and temperature changes) was also embedded in lore; but where did this lore come from? It was invented. Someone, somewhere, encapsulated complicated sets of observations into pithy structures, like:

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight
Red sky at morn, sailor be warned.

Is there a scientific basis to this snippet? According to the Library of Congress there is. Many disciplines have built mnemonic devices (My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies worked very well until “they” did away with Pluto!) and behavioral cues into how they transmit knowledge. Medical students famously learn mnemonics as a matter of course; there are pages and pages of them on the web. Are there appropriate mnemonics one could devise for O&M staff to help them retain solutions to problems as they are encountered?

Ritual, something done repeatedly and automatically to bring about a desired result, is another way to bind memory into behavior. Creating a physical routine that someone can act out without thinking through is how we drive a car. You don’t have to consciously run through a list of activities; instead you likely automatically scan the dashboard, looking to see if you have gas, if the oil light is on, before engaging gears and driving away. Are there analogs to driving in the maintenance of a commissioned building? When there are system aspects of the building that need irregular oversight, you can tie them to other seasonal activities—“When the beer is green, check the screens.”

It may sound a bit silly, and it certainly won’t accumulate overnight, but using real insight into how people actually learn can help you change their organizational behavior and preserve the status of your commissioned building!

You’re going to another NCBC? Why?I have been asked this question several times by my fellow CxA’s in the past few months.  And my answer is…………

Truth is; I have several reasons for going. You see, I have been to 13 of the past 19 NCBCs and each has been a unique experience. Admittedly, some have been more interesting than others and some have been in locations that were not exactly at the top of my list of places to go see (or in many cases, return to). But for me, the positive benefits far outweigh the detractions. Those positive benefits include:

• Affiliation
  When I attend the NCBCs, I get a sense of being a part of a vibrant, growing industry. Many of us in this industry work alone or within small companies and we sometimes get to the point where we feel like we are fighting the world alone. I owned and operated my commissioning company for 15 years with no employees and going to the NCBC’s gave me a chance to feel like there was an entire industry of people with like minds and similar situations.
• Education:
  The speakers and industry booths provide a quality source of information about new, cutting-edge technologies within our industry, the latest trends in the marketplace, updates on pending legislation changes related to commissioning and case studies that can be used in marketing.  Some of the sessions have been “roundtables” or panel discussions where hot topics are discussed. These lively debates have proven to be not only interesting but extremely informative with several ideas and positions being presented and discussed. No other Cx industry forum allows for this type of in-person interactions in a group setting.
• Connection:
  What better place, than at the NCBC, can one go to meet fellow industry members from all over the globe? Forget “what better place”……..this is the only place!  The NCBC is the only conference dedicated to commissioning that is open for anyone to attend. I met people at my first NCBC (back in 1994) that I am still in contact with today. I met my former business partner at an NCBC and we went on to operate a successful commissioning partnership for several years.  I have met someone new at every NCBC I have attended.

So why do I continue to attend the NCBCs?  Because they offer great value, they help grow and showcase MY industry, and I enjoy them.  But remember- NCBC is like anything else in that you get out of it whatever you put in. So if you do go (and I hope you do) don’t just go and sit in the back of the rooms, go and participate!  Join in on the open discussions, meet new people, talk and listen to those around you at the dinners and lunches. I challenge each and every one of you reading this to go to the NCBC and walk up to someone you don’t know, have never met, and introduce yourself.  Get to know your fellow industry partners. Come to the NCBC and listen, learn, and support your industry. Come to the NCBC and enjoy yourself.

At NCBC we’ll be discussing a wide variety of topics related to the commissioning of both new and existing buildings. There will be many topics, ranging from technical to finances to certification, but I will focus on an often misunderstood critical element of the commissioning process: the human element.
 
It’s time to start having a new kind of conversation when we consider commissioning (Cx) services.

We know that Cx is impressive and delivers impressive results. We know every architect and engineer should request Cx for their projects. We have the data. We have the proof. We see payback from Cx services as soon as four days and up to four years after the efforts. There are energy and non-energy benefits to the work we do each day. It is widely accepted that Cx is a valuable process.

Now, it’s time to evolve the conversation and focus on this: How do we make
the benefits for which our clients have invested good money last? And, how
can we, as a firm, help them accomplish this? Essentially, we need to start
answering the question of what exactly happens after we leave.

We’re seeing that Cx seems to have more permanent effects if it is involved
early in the building process. Corrections and adjustments made during those
initial phases are life-long and can create permanent advantages.
The story with retro-commissioning (RCx also referred to as EBCx) is different. We continue to see that energy savings are not consistent after a few years. The benefit remains, but it is not as impressive. There are various sources of information, but we tend to see that 65-75% of the peak RCx savings last beyond four years. That is good, but not great.
We need to help our customers strive to maintain 100% or even increase the savings through time and we believe it can be done. The difference can be found in how facility personnel are trained and involved in the process. The data proves that sites with high levels of training have strong energy savings and persistence in those savings. Conversely, sites with less training have less persistent savings.

We also need to educate owners on the idea that RCx is a one-time event and
nothing else. It’s simply not true. This notion could not be more wrong.
RCx services need to extend beyond physical energy saving implementation.
We need to guide the building owner and maintenance personnel on how to
maintain those savings if we want projects to operate at full efficiencies.
It won’t be an easy task – but this slight change to broaden our goals will be worth the rewards. When RCx focuses on education, ownership and long-term, consistent performance, then it delivers building owners and staff with the tools they need to make right decisions moving forward.

It is imperative that igniting this desire for improvement in the Cx and RCx
community and our customers be part of our focus.  A change in mindset can
enable us to see greater short-term and long-term energy savings and
stronger built environments all together.

I look forward to meeting with as many of you as I can in Nashville.

Retro-commissioning, or Existing Building Commissioning (EBCx), works. This is a simple conclusion for us to come to based not only on the experience of people like myself in the commissioning business, but also by the investment in retro-commissioning programs being undertaken around the United States by utilities and municipalities. One of many examples of this commitment to energy use reduction in existing buildings will be presented at the NCBC conference this May. This post is a brief introduction to what ComEd in particular is doing to improve existing buildings through energy efficiency, what it took to get the program started, and how validation of savings is being implemented.

Guest Blogger & 2012 NCBC Speaker: George Malek, PE, LEED AP, ComEd

ComEd currently has one of the largest (if not the largest) utility-based retro-commissioning program in North America. But it didn’t start out that way.

In 2007, we filed our first Energy Efficiency plan with the Illinois Commerce Commission.  Prior to that, I had worked with my team of energy engineers on several commissioning and retro-commissioning projects in ComEd’s service territory that were not related to any mandate.  I was a believer in the process and had been very aware of its benefits.  I was also convinced that commissioning should be part of “business as usual”. As such, I was very vocal about including retro-commissioning in our plan.  I knew that it was the right thing to do but I also knew that it would be a challenge to validate and verify savings.

We included a conceptual design in the plan. However, after the plan was approved and an implementer was hired, we invested plenty of time and brain power to design a program that can deliver benefits to our customers and had the measures in place to prove it.  Tight control over the service providers and a quality process helped ensure and verify savings.  We are now enjoying our fourth year of program operations.

Those attending our session will learn about the program details and also about the results thus far. The discussion will also touch on some healthy tension between the implementation team and the evaluator.

Learn more about this session and others at the NCBC 2012 website! We look forward to seeing you at the conference in Nashville!

Just over 20 years ago I was asked to help organize PECI’s first National Conference on Building Commissioning.  It seems like yesterday in some respects, but when I see the growth and advancement in the commissioning industry over these past two decades I realize how far we’ve come. In preparing for NCBC in this milestone year, I thought you’d like a glimpse into how NCBC was born.

In the early 1990’s, conversations at PECI were about how to make the commissioning process “business as usual.” At that time I had only worked in the industry, and for PECI, for two years. I thought this was a great opportunity to meet the industry leaders. Partnering with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), we determined one of the best ways to provide education on the commissioning process and move the industry  forward was to bring the key stakeholders from architecture, engineering, building owners, industry associations and research organizations together and have a dialog about making commissioning “business as usual”. 

During that first conference a summary report was developed that identified a list of key issues discussed at the conference.

1. The need for a whole building commissioning guidelines and standards.
2. Understanding the owners’ role and responsibility in the commissioning process.
3. Understanding the roles of the lenders, appraisers, and insurers.
4. Understanding who does the commissioning, who do they report to, and who pays them.
5. Understanding the interface between commissioning and design professionals.

As I reread this summary report and some of the papers from that first conference, I was impressed with what we have accomplished. Still, there is always work to do and we as an industry still have a few more items to address.  In many aspects, we’ve succeeded in making commissioning “business as usual.” But now is the time to move beyond that, to move forward and embrace the next level of efforts needed to create greater efficiency across the built environment.  Some of the upcoming challenges I have been hearing about include developing more commissioning authorities and moving from HVAC commissioning to a whole building approach, including the building envelope. 

At the lunch on May 16^th, I will be looking back more closely at what we have accomplished at NCBC over these past 20 years. Then, my colleague and friend Craig Hawkins will take a look back at the history of the Building Commissioning Association (BCA). Craig is a founding member of the association and an advocate for industry education and training. Finally, we will hear about the current state of the commissioning industry and future plans for the NCBC and the BCA.

I am proud of the advancements we have made in this industry and honored to have played a part in NCBC for the past 20 years.  Watching commissioning evolve and hearing conversations get elevated every year is exciting, I won’t lie. And at the conclusion of NCBC each year, I leave with confidence that we continue to make strides and the hope that all industry players continue the necessary conversations to create the framework for success. 

I invite you to join us in the conversation as well and be a part of the next 20 years.  See you in Nashville!

There has been much debate, discussion and discord in our association and industry around the question “Should a Commissioning Authority (CxA) be a licensed PE?” While this question is being asked, I’m not sure this is the real question that the commissioning industry should be addressing. Rather, I suggest that the real question we, as an industry, are trying to answer is: what does it take to be a qualified CxA? The BCA and the Building Commissioning Certification Board have outlined through the Certified Commissioning Professional (CCP) process a provider has the following:

Experience: Recommendations from the owners’ where they have completed successful projects.
Education/Knowledge: This is confirmed by completing the exam.

I believe we need to get to the next level of specificity. What are the knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs), and core competencies that a CxA must possess to be successful and the job task analysis.

We need to be in agreement with our membership and other industry stakeholders of the job tasks performed by the CxA. BCA recently engaged in two separate processes to determine the job tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities and core competences of a CxA. The first is through the partnership with PECI, California Energy Commission, NYSERDA, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and others to create a national training for commissioning authorities and energy auditors. The second is through an initiative by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to determine job tasks and skills as they relate to commissioning as a profession. The results from the PECI work are now complete and training is slated for launch in the fall of 2012. NREL’s results are out for public review and the BCA has provided comment.

No doubt, there is a lot of information to review. While some are quick to position themselves on either side of the PE debate, getting agreement with all the industry stakeholders CxA qualifications will take time.

Once there is industry agreement on the job task analysis with the knowledge, skills, abilities and core competencies of the commissioning profession, the requirement of professional licensure can more readily be determined. State licensure boards will have more information to base decisions and ultimately our industry will move in a more productive direction. A review of current information and position of the BCA will be presented and discussed at the National Conference on Building Commissioning (NCBC) on May 15-16, 2012 in Nashville, TN in the panel session titled
“ATTRIBUTES OF A CXA.” I hope you will join us there to discuss this important issue.

Mark F. Miller, P.E. CCP

1. Introduce the topics that will be presented by experts in the commissioning industry
2. Provide personal perspectives on NCBC and the commissioning industry
3. Highlight the great events planned in conjunction with the conference

We will be keeping you posted regularly from now until the conference kick-off in May, but with our first post I want to tell  how I personally got into the building commissioning business and share why I think the NCBC presents a great opportunity for building industry professionals to network and exchange ideas.

I have been in commissioning for six years, and am currently the Commissioning Department Manager for Epsten Group, Inc., a sustainable design and consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia; however, I ended up in this field almost entirely by accident.  I say almost and not completely because I have been involved in the building services industry since high school, when I lugged tools around for technicians at my father’s HVAC company in Georgia.  Though it could be unpleasant during those hot Georgia summers, I gained a lot of knowledge from observing those technicians hard at work.

I continued to work for my father every summer break, taking on more responsibility and learning from the experienced people around me. I often heard in the office or riding in the work trucks that engineers where disconnected—they did not understand what it takes to install, service, and maintain equipment. How could they really?  Most design engineers have not been in the position of installing or maintaining building systems.  Hearing these complaints led me to the decision that combining an engineering degree with my practical field experience would make me a great designer.  And so I went to college, got a mechanical engineering degree, and lined up an opportunity with a respected design firm.  But, when I went in for my interview and with my HVAC background on my resume they said, “We want you to join our commissioning department.”   I had no idea what commissioning meant at the time, but I thought I would try it for a while and then segue into design work.   It did not take long for me to realize that I was best suited for and really enjoyed building commissioning, and so I never quite made it to the design team.

Over the years, I have learned a lot from my co-workers and their wealth of commissioning knowledge.  I have always been interested in learning more from other people in the commissioning field.  Whether their specialty was data centers, laboratories, or green buildings I wanted to learn how I could get better at what I do. In the commissioning business we don’t often get an opportunity to share our experiences with other commissioning experts.  Largely due to the fact that we are off on multiple projects usually in multiple states.  The NCBC is a great forum to get together with other industry experts to learn about their successes and lessons learned, which is the reason I attend.

Another reason I look forward to the NCBC is that the conference is an educational event for commissioning professionals, building owners, architects, and engineers alike.  It’s about how building commissioning improves the building industry.  Participation by facility managers, architects, engineers, and contractors provides us commissioning professionals with an appropriate perspective which can only help us improve and vice versa.  The conference gives us a chance to exchange ideas, share thoughts on the future of commissioning, and to network with each other.  As a young professional in this business, my involvement with the Building Commissioning Association and NCBC will allow me to continue learning from other experts and shape the future of commissioning and the building industry.

With the launch of our NCBC Blog, you will learn more in future posts about what the NCBC offers and how you can take advantage of the opportunity.  Please keep checking in for helpful NCBC information (like the best places to eat in Nashville), the events surrounding NCBC, and even some ideas for how to get started on a commissioning career path.

Darren Draper, PE, LEED AP BD+C

Commissioning Department Manager

ddraper@epstengroup.com