2. Complete a Building Assessment

The tune-up specialist will use the Tune-up Report Workbook as a guide for assessing the building’s systems or subsystems that use energy or impact energy consumption, including:

• building envelope;

• HVAC systems (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning);

• domestic hot water systems, including water softening equipment;

• and electrical and lighting systems.

For each system, the following elements (if present) are checked to make sure they are meeting

the specifications defined by the building owner:

• Sensors

• Schedules

• Set points

• Outside air control/ventilation

• Equipment controls

• Maintenance or repair needs

• Design recommendations

First, the tune-up specialist will connect with the building owner/manager to understand the building’s characteristics and operational needs – that is, the way the building should be running to meet the current needs of occupants. In commissioning and retro-commissioning processes, this is often referred to as establishing the ‘building owner’s requirements.’ These are often determined by commitments to tenants in leasing documents and informed by the building’s design or specific use(s).

The tune-up specialist also collects basic building information, reviews benchmarking data, and analyzes energy bills to understand current building energy performance.

Then, the tune-up specialist does a building walk-through to check building energy systems and identify “corrective actions” to improve energy efficiency or fix operational problems with building systems. Corrective actions may be required or voluntary.

• Required corrective actions. That means a tune-up specialist checks to see if these elements meet the specifications determined by the building owner or manager. A ‘deficiency’ is when an element does not meet the building owner’s requirements or is in need of maintenance or repair.

o An operational adjustment to the schedule, settings, or calibration of an element is required only if they are found to be outside of building owner/manager specifications. An appropriate operational adjustment can be made to existing equipment without purchasing new equipment.

o This also means that repairs or basic maintenance on equipment must be made if needed. An appropriate maintenance action is one that is commonly considered to be standard or normal maintenance.

• Recommended corrective actions. That means that a tune-up specialist looks at these elements and provides recommendations that, if implemented, would reduce energy waste, help equipment run better/last longer, or improve the overall energy performance of the building.

These findings are documented in the Tune-up Report Workbook and shared with you, the building owner.