BECx: An Up and Coming Star On the Team
Building Enclosure Commissioning (BECx) is quickly becoming a major component of the future of whole building commissioning. As building owners and commissioning providers alike have continued the process of determining best practices for the commissioning process, building enclosure commissioning providers (BECxP) have become an increasingly more important part of the commissioning team. Working through commissioning providers, BECxPs have been able to provide a more comprehensive, holistic approach to Cx that has allowed building owners to have a more full understanding of their total building systems. This takes effect as early as the development of Owner's Project Requirements and continues on through the development of a building systems operation and maintenance plan and maintenance training.
One of the major contributors in the recent rise of BECx has been the latest revision to the LEED rating system. With the most recent release of LEED, the USGBC made BECx, during the design phase, a prerequisite for the Energy & Atmosphere Category. In addition to the previously mentioned prerequisite, the USGBC also made Enhanced BECx Option 2 for the Enhanced Cx credit and it can contribute 2 points to the pursuit of LEED Certification. This is in stark contrast to the previous version, LEED 2009, in which BECx could only contribute to a possible Innovation in Design credit.
Initially, under previous versions of LEED and with the ID credit being the only contribution to LEED Certification, BECx tended to be very process driven. This promoted, at times being broken down to simple checklists, and often nothing more than documentation to incorporate at the final tally of the certification checklist. However, much to the delight of the building enclosure industry, BECx has become ever more technical in nature and now often includes functional performance testing of fenestrations, roof systems, and air barriers, to name a few.
Now taking this process a step further, many have begun to utilize hygrothermic modeling in the BECx process to quantitatively analyze the building enclosure systems in the early phases of a project. This has been tremendously beneficial during Basis of Design and Design Document charettes to understand how the location and orientation of the building will affect the dew point and relative humidity within wall cavities among many other tremendous benefits to the design and construction processes. All of these factors contribute to the BECxP becoming more a part of the team with each project.
John G. Fields, PE
Director, Facilities Engineering & Architectural Services
East Carolina University
John joined East Carolina University in 2011 as Director of Facilities Engineering & Architectural Services and Capital Projects Coordinator for East Carolina University. He is responsible for planning, design and construction for all ECU capital projects.
A registered professional engineer in North Carolina John has previously served in similar capacities at NC State University (17 years) and Emory University (5 years). After leaving Emory, John spent 6 years as Vice President for Jones Lang LaSalle’s Healthcare Practice in Atlanta, GA.
John’s experience and passion is in providing senior leadership and management of large capital planning, design and construction programs for Owners. He has extensive experience in building commissioning from an owners perspective and is a strong advocate of full building envelope commissioning.
Barney York, PE, CBCP
Mr. York is a Project Manager with RMF Engineering, Inc. an international engineering and commissioning consulting firm operating across the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He is a registered professional engineer and certified building commissioning provider. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. He leads RMF’s southeastern U.S. based commissioning team which specializes in new, re- and retro-commissioning of buildings and campus infrastructure systems for higher education, health care, municipal and industrial campuses.
Through presentations and publications, Mr. York has been actively involved in educating the construction industry on maximizing the value gained to projects through strategic commissioning. He also routinely participates in owner education and has worked with North Carolina’s legislature to establish commissioning requirements for all state owned facilities.
Kristophor C. Linster, EI, LEED APBD+C, CDT
Mr. Linster is the Facilities Services Department Manager in Terracon’s Raleigh, North Carolina Office. Mr. Linster has been involved in more than 15 building enclosure commissioning projects since he joined Terracon 4 years ago. These projects have included renovations, additions and new construction projects throughout the Southeast. His experience in the investigation, design, and observation of building enclosure systems became a spring-board to providing building enclosure commissioning services to national commissioning firms and building owners and end users.