There is a temptation by building owners to skip the Design Phase of Commissioning on the basis of the high reputation of the design engineer. Our firm had a recent Retro-Commissioning assignment to address some minor problems at a high school that was designed by a well-renowned engineering firm. In a review of the HVAC water distribution systems, unrelated to the purpose of our visit, we discovered that four unnecessary pumps were included in the design of the heating and cooling systems. The pumps were turned off that day and by-passed with no adverse affect on the operation of either system, and will never need to run again. The pumps were installed five years earlier at a cost of $32,000. Since these were large horsepower pumps, one running every hour of the year, and one running for half the year (the other were installed for back-up duty), they were consuming electricity at a cost to the school district of $29,000 per year. This is roughly the cost of an average teacher’s annual salary!

The moral of this story is that even good design firms make mistakes. Very few are as costly as this one was, but it illustrates how important it is to have a second set of well trained eyes review a project’s design drawings.

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