TURNER BUILDING SCIENCE & DESIGN, LLC

Building Enclosure Commissioning

Today’s buildings take a high level of competence in design of the systems, an integrity and pride in workmanship by contractors, and the coordination of a countless number of trades people, equipment manufacturers, and disciplines. We know that to ensure that systems are performing as intended; all of these aspects should be reviewed by a team of commissioning professionals with a strong background and experience in building design and construction.

We methodically work to provide a method of risk reduction for our client’s capital investments through peer review and collaboration. Our team follows the construction process from pre-design through construction, and final acceptance. This process ensures that building systems meet the design intent, and that the building owner is provided with a facility that meets the initial requirements as outlined in the owner’s project requirements documents, all the while facilitating effective communication between professionals, owners, and contractors.

By incorporating our BECx services at the design stage provides the best way to integrate the process into the construction phase. By providing commissioning and testing specs to the contractor at bid stage, they have access to the BECx requirements and can incorporate the necessary protocols into their construction schedule and budget.

During the design process, we work to ensure that the envelope design details are complete, well-coordinated, and will perform as intended. During construction, we will witness the early construction details of the air and water barriers completed in the mock up and observe testing of the air and water barriers as installed by utilizing air leakage and water intrusion tests. Finally, we will verify that the systems are installed as designed, and that the quality of workmanship is at the level intended. Once the installation is complete, we will observe final whole building air tightness testing and additional testing for water intrusion of the building enclosure systems.

Envelope Commissioning 1
Figure 1: Wall commissioning transition strips at windows and joints and sheathing of bump cut.
Envelope Commissioning 2
Figure 2: Blower doors being used to generate guarded pressure zones which are used to isolate the test zone floor below from the remainder of the facility to allow measurement of the wall leakage through the test zone.