Commissioning is key to a smooth running central utility plant

Wood Harbinger’s Commissioning Principal, Bruce Pitts, and Industrial Systems Senior Technical Associate, Bruce Higgs, have written a great article about the importance of precision commissioning in a central utility plant project. The article, published October 30th in the Seattle DJC’s A&E Perspectives special section, is a candid, insider’s look at the unique challenge of providing effective commissioning services for a central utility plant. Here’s a short except but find the full article on the DJC’s website here, or view the PDF.

A successfully completed project, with all building systems working at optimum efficiency: that’s the end result for which the whole project team strives from day one.

Commissioning is a widely recognized quality-assurance process that can ensure this goal becomes reality. If you have the right commissioning team for the job, that is.

There are stark differences between commissioning a stand-alone building, such as an office tower or even a research facility, and commissioning a central utility plant.

Generally used in university or medical campuses and large-scale production facilities, central utility plants are a collection of finely calibrated, critical systems, with highly customized and sophisticated operating criteria, connected to rest of the campus by an intricately coordinated distribution system. The commissioning exercise — and the choice of who will take on that challenge — become exponentially more critical due to the complex nature of the central utility plant.

Bringing a highly skilled commissioning team with extensive central utility plant experience into the project early on is an owner’s best bet for successful project completion and ongoing operation and maintenance benefit.