Building commissioning

From brief to the first year of operation

No one would deliver a car without driving it. Buildings, however, are handed over without anyone having verified that their technical systems do what was expected of them. Commissioning fills exactly that gap: it organises, across the whole project, the verification and the evidence that installations reach their designed performance.

Discuss a project Scope and phases

Definition

What commissioning actually is.

Commissioning is the set of tasks carried out so that an installation reaches its contractual level of performance, and so that the conditions exist for it to hold that performance over time. In practice it answers four questions, in order: what is expected of this building, does the design answer it, do the installed systems actually deliver it, and will the operator be able to run them?

Each question produces dated documents. That traceability is what separates commissioning from good intentions — and it is also what makes it usable as evidence, whether in front of a certification body, an incoming investor or a tenant disputing service charges.

One point matters for international readers used to North American practice: in France the discipline exists, it is described in a reference guide published by the industry, and it is required by several certification schemes — but it is not imposed by any building regulation. Its contractual basis is therefore the scheme, not the law. Our comparison of certification requirements sets out which scheme demands what.

The problem

Why a new building almost always uses more than its model predicted.

The gap is rarely a calculation error. The regulatory energy model describes a conventional building, with normalised occupancy scenarios and equipment assumed to be set at its design operating point. The delivered building accumulates deviations that none of those assumptions anticipate.

  • Hydronic circuits never balanced, or balanced and then disturbed by a later intervention.
  • A functional description that is approximate, or correct but never checked against the parameters actually loaded into the controller.
  • Ventilation flow rates never verified since start-up.
  • A building management system delivered with commissioning overrides still in place.
  • An operator who takes possession untrained and neutralises what they cannot interpret.

None of these is a defect in the legal sense. None will appear on a snagging list. All of them cost money, immediately and durably. That is the space commissioning occupies, and it is why the discipline sits closer to project management than to inspection.

Boundaries

What commissioning is not.

Three confusions recur, and each of them leads a client to buy something other than what they intended.

  • It is not technical inspection. The French contrôleur technique addresses structural safety and life safety, verifying compliance against a calculation framework rather than actual operation.
  • It is not the pre-handover inspection. Those operations establish the conformity of the delivered works and produce the snagging list. They happen at the end of construction, when commissioning began at briefing stage.
  • It is not the contractor's own set-up work. Adjusting and tuning installed equipment belongs to the contractor, and to the contractor alone. Commissioning verifies that this work was properly done and keeps the evidence, without ever substituting itself for it.

On an existing building the same approach takes another name — retro-commissioning — and acts first on settings, control logic and operating schedules rather than on equipment replacement. Extended over time and supported by metering, it becomes ongoing commissioning, which French regulation now touches indirectly through its building automation requirements.

The scope

Five phases, and the first one decides the rest.

A third of the work happens before ground is broken. A project that discovers the subject during construction has already lost what should have been documented upstream, and it does not come back.

  1. 1 BriefWrite down what is expected of the building before it is drawn. This becomes the reference against which everything else is verified.
  2. 2 DesignCritical review of drawings and specifications, insertion of testing clauses into the works packages, definition of the functional tests expected trade by trade.
  3. 3 ConstructionReview of contractor submittals, attendance at verifications, a single issues register, preparation of handover.
  4. 4 HandoverVerification of the contractor's set-up work, functional testing, comparison of the functional description with the parameters actually loaded, transfer to the operator.
  5. 5 First yearSeasonal testing and optimisation of settings while the one-year statutory completion guarantee still runs.

Independence

Who may carry the role.

This question decides more than it appears to. Assigning commissioning to the design team is the simplest procurement route and the cheapest on paper — but the team that designed then verifies its own design, and deviations travel badly under those conditions.

Schemes take different positions. The French low-carbon scheme BBCA requires a third party. The German scheme DGNB requires an independent party that is neither designer nor contractor. LEED version 5 removed the allowance that let a qualified member of the design or construction team hold the role on smaller projects and on data centres. BREEAM separates installation from commissioning.

We state plainly when our own position on a project prevents us from taking the role. Our environmental certification management practice is carried by ARKENOR; the mechanical and electrical competence it draws on comes from ARKEMEP.

FAQ

What international clients ask.

No. No French building regulation requires it. It becomes contractually binding as soon as a project targets a label or certification: the Effinergie labels require it unconditionally, the NF Habitat HQE scheme rewards it at its maximum weighting, LEED makes it a prerequisite, and HQE Bâtiment Durable treats it as a dedicated theme broken down into fifteen actions. Many projects therefore fall within scope without the subject having been addressed at the outset.
The pre-handover operations establish the conformity of the delivered works and produce the snagging list. They occur at the end of construction and address what can be observed. Commissioning starts at briefing stage, covers design review and contract drafting, and continues through the first year of operation with seasonal testing. The two are complementary, and one does not replace the other.
Contractually yes, and it is the simplest route to procure. But the team that designed then verifies its own design, and the most demanding schemes exclude it. BBCA requires a third party, DGNB requires a party that is neither designer nor contractor, and LEED version 5 removed the exemption that previously allowed it on smaller projects and data centres. Where independence is required, the role must be procured separately.
As early as possible, and in practice before the design team is contracted. Roughly a third of the value sits in the brief and in design review, which is also what determines whether the works packages contain usable testing clauses. LEED version 5 makes this explicit by requiring appointment during pre-design or very early design for its enhanced credit.
Yes, under the name retro-commissioning. It acts first on settings, control logic and schedules rather than on equipment replacement, which makes it compatible with an occupied building and with a constrained capital budget. Extended over time and supported by metering, it becomes ongoing commissioning — the approach French building automation regulation now pushes towards indirectly.

Go further

The rest of the commissioning material.

A project to commission in France?

We scope the assignment at the level your scheme actually requires, at the right point in the programme, and we say plainly when an independent third party is needed.

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