Retro-Commissioning Services

When it comes to energy savings, a great deal of focus is placed on equipment.  While it is very important to have efficient equipment, controlling it correctly may be more crucial.  Building controls tell much of your equipment when and how to run.  Retro-commissioning (RCx) (also known as recommissioning) is the systematic process that optimizes your building controls to improve building systems and operations.  Improvements can be seen in energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction, safety, comfort and even equipment lifetimes.  It comes as no surprise that a great deal of cash is also saved on RCx.

How does RCx achieve such great savings at a reasonable cost?

The key is that controls affect much of the equipment within buildings.  By tweaking the controls, and getting them to operate optimally, you improve the way the entire building functions, without having to replace the equipment itself.

Why every building should be retro-commissioned?

There are a number of reasons why a building’s controls may be in need of RCx.  Hardware, software and human factors were the three most significant problems that arose.  A building that suffers from any of those ailments is running inefficiently, and is costing you money.  With building retro-commissioning, you will likely achieve a large amount of energy savings.

Determine if your building is a good candidate

There are a number of tell-tale signs that your buildings need RCx.  It is even possible for you to do them yourself (though it might be easier to have a company like Askon to do a quick analysis).  Here are three easy ways to tell if RCx will likely reveal significant savings:

• Benchmarking tools can be used to compare your facility with others like it using important factors such as square metre, utility data and weather.  A building with a poor energy rating is inefficient and is probably a good candidate for RCx.
• Frequent equipment and control failures also indicate a building’s need for RCx.
• Occupant complaints indicate that the building systems are either overloaded or poorly controlled.  The latter case, which is more likely, is another sign that controls probably need a tune-up.

Regardless of its age, a building needs to be properly controlled.  Retro-commissioning should be completed on every building, really.

RCx will save you money, expand equipment life, increase comfort and safety for the building occupants, and reduce green house gas emissions.  On top of that, you can probably reduce your utility cost by 10% to 30% through a comprehensive retro-commissioning process.