Building Enclosure Commissioning

We want you to feel confident in your structure even after it’s been built. See how our dedication to construction oversight and testing ensures your building meets all your design, operational, and performance objectives.

What is the Building (Enclosure) Envelope?

Let’s start by first defining the area and importance of the exterior building elements. The building envelope is the exterior or shell of a building that repels environmental elements. It is the physical separator between the conditioned and unconditioned environment of a building, including its resistance to air and water infiltration, vapor drive, heat gain/loss, light, and acoustical properties. The building envelope includes all six (6) sides of a building, not just the exterior walls.

“Don’t just rely on the Contractor’s 12-month warranty. Make sure to
have proper field-building enclosure oversight/inspections and Test Everything”

Traditional Construction Process – Don’t Forget to Test!

Traditionally, an architect and engineer design a building. You bid and sign a contract to have your building built, then a general contractor and a series of specialized sub-contractors construct your structure. Everyone assumes everything is well after that last touch-up paint punch list item has been completed. The General Contractor gives you a warranty for 12 months. If your building leaks, you call the contractor to come out and fix it, however, any problems after the warranty expires, become yours to repair, including the damage you never saw earlier.

Don’t just hope and pray your new building was designed and built well. TEST IT! No one would contemplate buying a new one-of-a-kind custom-built car for $60k-200k without extensive testing first; so why wouldn’t you test your one-of-a-kind multi-million dollar building.

After many years of site forensic investigations, we have found that many expensive repairs could have been easily avoided if only a 3rd party was present to oversee its construction. It is important to make sure each trade finished their work properly before the next trade covered up incomplete or incorrect work. If some Quality Control process with physical air/water testing and adhesion testing was performed on the various wall, roofs, horizontal decks, operable windows, curtain walls, and other enclosure components of the building, these problems would have been corrected during construction. You could have avoided costly interruptions in your business operation. What would that be worth to you?

What is a Building Envelope Commissioning (becx)?

Building Enclosure Commissioning is a quality-control process for evaluating the performance of a facility enclosure (envelope) to determine if a project is meeting the defined performance objectives, design standards, and operational requirements of the owner. (such as “I do not want my building to leak, have premature failure of its components, or have indoor air quality problems…) This formal process starts in Pre-Design and continues through construction to occupancy.

DTR has always believed in mandatory site construction oversight with building enclosure testing. The practice of building enclosure construction oversight and testing (and more testing…) has been part of our practice for decades, but it has only been more recently that the industry more specifically defined this process as Building Enclosure Commissioning (becx). “Building Envelope Commissioning” or “Building Enclosure Commissioning” is a Quality Control (QC) process wherein the energy performance of a facility, system, or assembly is evaluated and verified against defined objectives and criteria. Building enclosure commissioning—becx—is intended to assure building quality by establishing a formalized process to verify (spot check) that a building enclosure’s individual elements and the overall enclosure are designed and constructed properly and that it meets the owner’s expectations.

Building Envelope Process with DTR

Today, project schedules are often compressed, construction budgets are tighter, and buildings have increasingly more complex designs due to the implementation of new energy code requirements. Generic detailing to accommodate public bidding laws, challenging new building products, and more technical installation techniques increase the risk that your building will have building enclosure deficiencies.

Building Enclosure Commissioning (becx) with DTR is the best quality assurance/quality control process to meet the architect’s and owner’s building performance requirements. It is a critical tool to ensure the success of any construction project.

Standard Building Enclosure Commissioning is highly recommended for every building project. USGBC, LEED v4.1 also has a version of building enclosure commissioning known as “Enhanced Commissioning” which follows many of the same protocols as our standard commissioning services, however, the becx agent for the enhanced commissioning cannot be involved in any of the design of the building. When hiring a Commissioning Agent for this role, they are truly a 3rd party observer only. DTR would be happy to discuss with you should you decide if “Enhanced Commissioning” is right for your project.

FULL RANGE OF SERVICES

Our technical Architects and Building Science professionals provide the full range of pre-design, design, pre-construction, construction, and operations and maintenance phase services and are complemented by 3rd party testing abilities for acoustical, structural, thermal, blast resistance, durability, energy, and air/waterproofing performance.