a 1-2-week line item at the end of the project. I like to make sure we address this during our commissioning kickoff meeting, so the team also knows we’ re here to help and share in the project’ s successful delivery, not just add to the punch list at the end of the project.
David Chiu: The biggest thing we’ re seeing for government-led projects, especially on the military side, is the tendency to add meetings for further discussion that end up increasing our budget. By the time a project finishes, we’ re usually over our originally planned number and our original scope. For now, on our side, when we start drafting the proposal for government-related projects, we tend to be more cautious about our fee and take into account all the meetings we might need and that might occur later in the construction phase. Let’ s say for a typical commissioning project, we normally do a total of 10-15 meetings, but for government, we’ ll try to double that in our scope.
Government facilities often have to remain operational during upgrades, renovations, or phased construction. What does effective commissioning coordination look like in those situations, and how do you help agencies maintain continuity?
Ali Sidun: In my experience, it really depends on the project type and scope. For the most part, we work with the occupants’ schedules and coordinate with the contractors and the owner’ s rep to make sure our on-site activities are as non-intrusive as possible. Sometimes, this means night testing and weekend testing. When occupants have been moved out of the facility for construction, we feel the pressure during the acceptance phase, which is our major testing period, because everyone’ s excited to wrap up and move in. We try to verify and backcheck any outstanding items on our issues log in dedicated close-out days on-site, so the entire team is aligned before turnover.
Federal and municipal projects involve many stakeholders, including owners and facility staff, contractors, designers, and authorities having jurisdiction. How do you support effective collaboration across those groups, and what does strong teamwork look like in practice?
Ali Sidun: This is a great question! Communication styles vary from team to team, so each project successfully and effectively communicating with everyone is like an interpretation activity. Sometimes, the contract documents are explicit on the communication protocols and state exactly who we should be sharing all information through, instead of contacting all team members directly. Other times, the owner’ s rep requests to be copied on all communications. We look for this information in the contract documentation before getting started, and if it’ s something we need clarification on, we’ ll address it during our commissioning kickoff meeting.
David Chiu: Federal and municipal projects do involve a lot of stakeholders, so typically, on the owner’ s side, they will hire another construction management firm that acts as an owner rep. This adds another layer to the whole commissioning process, since we already have the general contractor, all the subs, the design team, and the architect. For us, when we’ re involved in projects like these, we want to be really proactive about anything we receive from the owner, the architect, or the design team. We aim to be
David Chiu: A lot of times, construction has to happen when people are still working in the existing buildings. So we do a lot of phased commissioning. An important precaution at the very beginning with our proposals is to incorporate the additional cost of dividing the commissioning into multiple phases, as opposed to testing the system all at once. Once we get into the actual construction, to ensure we effectively execute our commissioning scope, we hold meetings beforehand to coordinate with all stakeholders. Our planning allows our testing activities, like turning on and off the equipment, to not affect the current tenants of the building. This way, the owner knows when we’ re going to do what, and they can schedule ahead either a week or a few days before the commissioning activities to notify them that there will be some interruption.