This summer, I attended the 2022 ASHRAE Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada. The show was well attended, featuring great discussions and strong participation from people both in person and virtually. It’s always good to get together with colleagues to discuss the evolving construction environment, commissioning (Cx) challenges, opportunities, and progress.
This year in ASHRAE Commissioning Standing Standard Project Committee 300 (SSPC 300), there was quite a bit of discussion regarding existing building commissioning as well as ongoing commissioning (OCx) processes. Specifically, we spent time reviewing the next steps for advancing the proposed new guideline 1.7P for OCx. It has previously been recognized that OCx warrants its own guideline versus being covered within other Cx guidelines. Our discussions included topics such as differentiation between OCx and EBCx processes and expanding the scope of the guideline to systems beyond HVAC&R. In addition, we discussed potentially including topics such as fault detection and diagnostics and monitoring-based Cx.
In other guidelines and standards news, ASHRAE indicated that it’s considering expanding the Title, Purpose, and Scope (TPS) of Guideline 1.3 Building Operations and Maintenance Training beyond HVAC&R systems to cover all disciplines. This is very important since, due to the increased complexity of building technology, O&M personnel need to be properly trained on all commissioned assets, including building envelopes, electrical and fire alarm systems, etc., and the guideline can set the expectations for the training requirements.
ASHRAE will be updating Guideline 1.4 Preparing Systems Manuals for Facilities to include a section addressing disasters and resiliency that will outline a building readiness mode of operation for the facility after a shutdown due to natural or man-made disasters.
Another highlight was ASHRAE creating a free annex library. Annexes are elements common to multiple standards and guidelines. Now easily accessible to anyone through the ASHRAE website, the annex library makes it easier to keep these common annexes current across all standards through a process of ongoing review and revision.
A busy committee meeting and an informative conference. I’m already looking forward to the winter ASHRAE meeting in Atlanta, GA.
