P2S Thought Leadership Series
Federal and municipal agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver facilities that perform as intended from day one while also meeting strict requirements for energy efficiency, resiliency, life-safety, and long-term operational value. Whether the project involves a civic building, public safety facility, campus utility upgrade, administrative building modernization, or other government-owned asset, commissioning plays a critical role in helping owners verify that building systems are installed, tested, and functioning in alignment with project goals. These projects often move forward under tight schedules, evolving regulations, occupied-site constraints, and high expectations for accountability and performance.
P2S Commissioning leaders Ali Sidun and David Chiu work closely with agencies, design teams, and contractors to help bring clarity and structure to complex government projects. Through their experience supporting federal and municipal work, they help owners navigate the technical and coordination challenges that come with delivering reliable, high-performing facilities. We spoke with them to gain insight into the priorities, challenges, and opportunities shaping commissioning in the government sector today.
Thanks for joining us. We’ re excited to discuss commissioning for federal and municipal facilities. From your perspective, what are the most important factors driving Cx for municipal and federal facilities? Any significant changes in the past couple of years?
Ali Sidun: Over the past few years, we’ ve seen a major push towards decarbonization efforts, especially on the municipal side. Everyone is concerned with energy efficiency for their facilities for performance and resilience purposes. The way we can help with this focal point is by having effective controls integration meetings with the controls contractor and the design team. This ensures we’ re all on the same page and have a thorough understanding of the intent and sequence of operations when the project is ready for acceptance testing.
David Chiu: For government-owned facilities and projects in California, the compliance requirements are very strict:
FEATURING P2S Commissioning Leaders
Ali Sidun and David Chiu
they have to comply with Title 24, Part 6 Commissioning requirements, and any building that is larger than 10,000 square feet requires commissioning. So, during the plan check period, they need to ensure commissioning has been included in the overall project. And that’ s only the minimum requirement. For many government-owned projects, they typically want LEED certification, either LEED Gold or LEED Platinum. And for those two certifications, they have a fundamental commissioning requirement as well. There’ s also LEED Enhanced Commissioning, which, if you go for that, leads to additional points that go toward higher LEED certification. Those are some of the main factors driving commissioning for those facilities. As far as I know, there haven’ t been any major changes in commissioning requirements over the past couple of years. It’ s still focused on the requirements for LEED certification or to pass the minimum stay requirement for the construction projects that we have.
What are some common blind spots that can lead to cost, schedule, or performance issues later in government projects? How can project teams identify and address those risks earlier?
Ali Sidun: I think some common blind spots relating to cost, schedule, and / or performance have a lot to do with communicating expectations. Commissioning is such a collaborative process, and we need to make sure we’ re sharing our understanding of the overall project schedule. We have to communicate with the contractor teams on how our activities are affected by, and in turn affect, the rest of the team’ s activities during the construction and acceptance phase. It’ s becoming less common, but the biggest misunderstanding about commissioning is that it’ s
4 P2S MAGAZINE SPRING 2026