| Building commissioning is the process of confirming equipment is operating correctly. Efficient operation of equipment at the time of installation and during the life cycle operation has a significant impact on operational cost, energy use, and emissions. There are two fault detection means and methods for commissioning buildings: ongoing commissioning (computers collect the data) and retroactive commissioning (humans collect the data). In practice, a problem exists with both commissioning processes, improvement to the means and methods of fault detection have not been achieved resulting in a less than desirable efficiency and return on investment. Due to lack of studies and access to the proprietary data required for research, this problem remains unsolved. The purpose of this dissertation was to assess fault detection differences between ongoing and retroactive commissioning identifying areas where improvements could be made. Comparing differences was important to increasing the fault detection efficiency required to achieve an adequate return on investment for commissioning services and increase building energy performance. A quantitative comparative design was utilized to address this problem. Four commissioning firms participated in the study; three located in Boston, Massachusetts and one in Baltimore, Maryland. The fault occurrence data was collected for two groups of buildings, 40 for each commissioning type (ongoing and retroactive). To answer the research question, two hypotheses with statistically testable conditions were postulated. The results from the independent t tests were statistically insignificant resulting in no recommendations. |
