Design Review

In today’s fast paced design world, Cx Associates provides a second set of eyes throughout the design process to ensure system designs are optimized, the owner’s requirements are met, and the final design documents can be clearly understood by the construction team. By collaborating and working closely with the design team, our peer-level QA/QC design review process is an extra step towards a final product that will meet your needs.

A commissioning design review helps avoid what would be a $500 fix on paper from becoming a $5,000 fix after having been built. We provide an independent analysis of the design for new building mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and other key systems to ensure the design will meet the owner’s project goals. By reviewing the design before anything is built, we identify equipment installation improvements that save our customers start-up, operation, maintenance, and long-term energy costs. Our design reviews add value and save cost by:

Verifying that systems are designed to work together.

Ensuring that the owner and occupant needs are not lost to cost-cutting.

Finding opportunities for energy and first-cost savings.

Ensuring design includes long-term equipment maintenance and access requirements.

Identifying controls strategies that meet the intent of the spaces.

The Design Review Process

Leveraging our staff’s prior experience, Cx Associates adds value and saves cost through Design Review.

We bring prior experience as design engineers to the design review process, as well as our work in successfully implementing retrocommissioning measures and engineering retrofit projects.

Our staff brings knowledge about the design process and an ability to identify design opportunities to the design phase of any project.

Our Professional Engineers on staff participate in all our design phase work, allowing us to provide peer-level review rather than the more cursory effort often applied by commissioning providers. This results in designs that are better coordinated, more complete at bid time, are easier to maintain and operate, and use less energy.

It's not uncommon for CxA to identify first cost reductions at no loss of efficacy. For example, our multiple design reviews performed for a recent 180,000 square foot project resulted in over $220,000 in first cost savings – more than paying for the cost of our entire fee.

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