Commissioning Services

BaselineES has extensive experience with optimizing facility equipment, mechanical systems and controls to reduce energy consumption or resolve operational issues, and provides New Construction and Remodel Commissioning Services and Existing Facility Re-Commissioning Services, as well as Existing Facility Condition Assessments.

New Construction and Remodel Commissioning

The importance of correct and thorough commissioning of newly constructed or remodeled facility MEPR systems cannot be overstated. If proper startup and commissioning practices are not followed, the ongoing reliability and efficiency of these systems can be forever compromised.

BaselineES commissions new and remodeled customer facilities, equipment, and building systems rigorously, documenting equipment and deficiencies as we proceed. Baseline then works with the facilities’ suppliers and contractors to make sure each deficiency is resolved.

Baseline takes the responsibility of commissioning our customer’s mechanical, electrical, plumbing and refrigeration systems seriously, and ensures our customer’s facility assets and systems are placed into service without design, equipment, or installation defects, thereby eliminating the downtime, operational disruption, and increased operating expenses these defects cause.

Existing Facility Re-Commissioning

Re-commissioning often represents the single most significant measure that can be taken to reduce a facility’s energy usage and eliminate long-standing issues with facility performance or environmental conditions. Re-commissioning is all about making the best possible use of your existing building assets, and is the first step that should be taken in any major facility upgrade improvement program, before any equipment replacements or system re-designs are considered.

BaselineES offers re-commissioning services for all the key systems and equipment within customers’ existing facilities, including refrigeration, HVAC, lighting, and control systems.

Our Process:

Baseline’s field engineers carefully review and test the key systems and equipment in our customers’ facilities to uncover any operating issues, incorrect operating control setpoints, or maintenance problems that are causing excess energy usage, performance issues, or equipment failures. After carefully documenting all existing conditions and determining the facts, Baseline engineers then work with customer maintenance personnel or service contractors to correct condition faults, adjust control setpoints and strategies, and complete any needed maintenance in order to bring the facility to optimum energy and operating efficiency.

Existing Facility Condition Assessments

Facility condition assessments are most often completed to lay the ground work for major remodels, to establish the condition of facilities and assets being considered for purchase or sale, or to evaluate the effectiveness of existing service and maintenance programs and contractors. Facility condition assessments done by Baseline are completely independent and unbiased appraisals of customer facilities, and include on the evaluation and testing portion of the full re-commissioning process.

Engineering Consulting & Design

All of Baseline’s engineering and design work is focused on minimizing total cost of ownership and maximizing end-user value. We make sure our customers’ initial facility investment requirement is kept as low as possible, while at the same time maximizing facility energy efficiency and ongoing reliability and minimizing facility life cycle operating expenses. BaselineES takes on engineering consulting and design projects of all kinds. These include:

Engineering Analysis, Feasibility Studies and Testing
Fault Diagnosis and Remediation
Commercial and Industrial Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, and Refrigeration (MEPR) Systems Design
Building and Equipment Control System Design
Facility Management System Design
Standby, Emergency, and Cogeneration Power Plant Design
Third Party Engineering Design Services

Baseline offers engineering services and construction (or purchase) design documents for new facility and remodel construction projects to customers anywhere in the world. Baseline specializes in the design of commercial refrigeration, HVAC, and computerized control systems.

Baseline can also provide full mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and refrigeration (MEPR) engineering services and construction design documents. Baseline is willing to work directly for the facility builder/owner, or for the owner’s designated AE firm, or for owner-specified consultants, contractors, and developers. Baseline also offers third party “back-office” engineering design services for other engineering organizations, including:

Supermarket and other commercial property in-house design departments
MEPR firms serving the supermarket and commercial building design industries
Custom manufacturers and job shop fabricators requiring project-by-project manufacturing design documents

Project Management

BaselineES offers comprehensive project management services for Energy and Maintenance Projects, Ongoing Monitoring & Optimization, and Construction Projects.

Energy and Maintenance Project Management

As owner’s agents, BaselineES also designs, develops, and manages the implementation of large-scale facility energy and maintenance retrofit/upgrade projects and programs. Baseline’s principals have carried out major energy and maintenance expense reduction programs for customers around the world. We know where the best supply and demand side opportunities are and we know how to bring them to fruition.

Baseline helps customers reduce their energy consumption, energy and maintenance costs, and environmental impact through demand-side projects using a systematic, multistep approach, in which Baseline:

Analyses historical energy usage and maintenance expense data
Identifies achievable improvements in facility design, equipment, control system and operating practices
Assesses the potential savings, implementation costs, and return on the investment for each possible project element
Pilots the project, analyses the results against the projected impacts, and refines the project design
Manages the final project implementation across the remainder of the customer’s candidate facilities

For purely supply-side energy and maintenance cost reduction projects, Baseline’s principals have extensive experience in negotiating with utility suppliers and service contractors around the world. Baseline can help customers negotiate the best possible rates and supply agreements for energy supply, facilities maintenance, or any related services.

Ongoing Monitoring & Optimization

BaselineES offers tailored monitoring and optimization services that keep customers’ key assets running as efficiently, effectively, and reliably as they should, while also allowing customers a fully transparent view of the performance of their multi-site facilities and the contractors and personnel who maintain and operate them. These services help clients to:

Maintain and improve the condition of key mechanical equipment and systems
Maintain and improve facility energy efficiency and reduce consumption
Maintain ‘optimized’ system setpoints and operations following commissioning or re-commissioning
Maintain regulatory compliance
Maintain LEED compliance

Baseline has found that reports and lists from monitoring services and centers are of limited useful value to customers, unless they are close-coupled with resolution teams or agents in the field. When condition or control issues are detected during our monitoring activities, Baseline generates a corrective action plan and then follows the correction process through to final resolution. Baseline assigns field engineers (or trains customer staff) to work in tandem with Baseline’s remote monitoring engineers to help effect prompt and complete resolution of all issues identified.

Construction Project Management

As owner’s agents, BaselineES manages the specify/bid/buy/install/commission process for many types of facilities-related construction, including

Mechanical System Construction or Remodel Projects
Refrigeration System Construction or Remodel Projects
Refrigerated Building Construction or Remodel Projects
Installation of Facility Management Systems, and Building and Equipment Control Systems
Installation of Asset Management and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems

Whether Baseline designs a customer’s construction project or retrofit program, or the project design is provided by others, Baseline offers comprehensive project management services. These services include all of the steps required to purchase, construct, and commission facility mechanical, electrical, plumbing, refrigeration and control systems and other building elements and equipment, or to perform major upgrades on them. Our project management personnel and processes insure projects are completed on budget, on time, and with the best possible end result.

Sustainability Consulting

While Environmental Sustainability is the goal of every responsible business and institution, measuring and then reducing your organization’s carbon and total environmental footprints is not a simple undertaking. There are many diverse issues and complexities to be considered if a sustainable development program is to result in real and measurable reductions in an organization’s impact on the earth’s environment.

Whether your organization already has an established sustainable development program, or is just starting to formalize one, BaselineES can help you identify and achieve your sustainability goals. We provide a wide range of engineering and consulting services to help companies and institutions measure and reduce their carbon and other environmental footprints and grow their organizations using sustainable development principles and practices.

These services include:

Program Development and Management

For some major customers, BaselineES manages their entire sustainability program. This includes the coordination of internal stakeholder and program oversight teams and committees, identification and analysis of potential carbon footprint reduction and other sustainability measures, management of sustainability measure implementation, and analysis and measurement of the results achieved, including a comparison with the sustainability efforts of the client’s peer group.

We can also produce your annual and quarterly corporate sustainability reports, sustainability program presentations and case studies for you to use to communicate your environmental profile, progress and current sustainability initiatives to both internal and external stakeholders.

Carbon Footprint Accounting

BaselineES offers total life cycle carbon footprint evaluation for existing and new facilities, including facility construction, equipment, operating, remodel/repair, and decommissioning/demolition carbon emissions estimation and accounting. Using custom web-based software and systems, Baseline can calculate and analyze the total carbon footprint of your organization’s facilities and operating activities quickly and accurately. graph

Once the carbon footprint analysis has been conducted, BaselineES can help our customers develop carbon footprint reduction programs for existing facilities and operations. We provide our clients access to their carbon accounting results in both Excel and web format, with built-in graphing, drill down, and “what if” tools to allow easy access to full and partial views of all data and facilitate in-depth analysis. Our reports include “constant E-Grid factor” and constant consumption year-over-year analyses to allow clients to see their progress towards reducing their carbon footprint on and the impact of externalities in their electricity supply on this progress. We also provide a “headroom analysis”, which estimates the client’s facilities’ carbon footprints in the base-case scenario, using the lowest possible carbon electricity and fuel choices reasonably available. This allows our customers to quickly determine the level of opportunity for carbon reduction available from simple switching to a greener electricity source or switching heating fuel times, where such options are available.

Engineering Services

BaselineES is not only able to work with our customers to identify ideas for projects to reduce their impact on the environment, but is also able to engineer, construction manage, and commission those projects during their implementation.

BaselineES provides:

Low and zero lifecycle carbon facility prototype design and development
LEED design and certification
BREEAM design and certification
Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, refrigeration, and facility control and automation system criteria development and full engineering design
Commercial refrigeration and kitchen exhaust system engineering
Building commissioning and re-commissioning of all kinds.

Additionally, BaselineES offers our customers the option of having their new projects monitored on a continuing basis after startup and commissioning, to make sure all environmental and commercial goals and benefits are achieved. This sets us apart from many other companies working in sustainability services areas.