Page 5 - CSA INDEX - Spring 2019

Commissioning gives construction project teams the ability to finish precisely. It enables them not just to safely
deliver a built asset on-time and on-cost, but to handover a facility that functions correctly from the perspective
of the people that use, manage, operate & maintain it.

It is important to understand that commissioning is not just a set of site-based activities undertaken by people
using spanners, allen keys and screwdrivers. It is a quality assurance process that begins pre-design and finishes
post-handover. At project inception, commissioning requires clients and their project teams to define the
outcomes that need to be achieved. They then need to establish the plan-of-action for achieving these outcomes.
As the project makes its way through the subsequent stages of delivery, they need to continually verify and
document that everything being done will enable these outcomes to be achieved – whether this be a contractual,
commercial, design, specification or programming activity

This means that a correctly executed commissioning process requires two completely different, but intimately
related, sets of skills. The first specialism is the ability to establish and then manage the overall commissioning
process – let’s call this Commissioning Management. The second specialism is the ability to physically validate
system & building performance – let’s call this Hands-on Commissioning. These two interwoven elements of
commissioning are both about finishing; firstly by establishing and orchestrating the strategic gameplan and
secondly by performing on the pitch during the match.

A commissioning team meeting during the Performance validation of a
design stage of a project lighting system on site

The relationship between great finishers and successful teams is a fundamental principle of football, as it is for
project delivery. Impressive statistics for passes completed, tackles made or metres run are OK, but without the
end product of goals scored and victories attained, they are meaningless.

No team has ever had success without having a player to score goals. No building has ever truly been successfully
delivered without it having been properly commissioned.

In the 2003/2004 season, Arsenal’s mythical “invincibles” won the English Premier League as an unbeaten team;
Thierry Henry scored 39 goals in 51 matches for them. When Brazil won the FIFA 2002 World Cup, their striker
Ronaldo de Lima was the tournament’s top scorer with 8 goals He also scored both goals in the 2-0 victory over
Germany in the final. Didier Drogba scored in all four of Chelsea’s FA cup victories between 2007 and 2012,
including 3 match-winning goals. He also scored the late equaliser and the match-winning penalty in Chelsea’s
2012 Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich.