Field Flash

The breakdown

What actually arrives, and when.

Commissioning scopes are usually sold as a capability and settled later as an argument. This page is the opposite: the documents that land, the order the work happens in, what is needed from your side, and what deliberately sits outside the fee.

The documents that land

A Level 3 and Level 4 package for one building typically arrives as a single reviewed set, in your platform's format.

Pre-functional checklists — one per asset

Installation, termination, labelling, torque and settings verification written against that asset's submittal rather than a generic template. Every device on the list gets its own sheet.

Functional test procedures — one per system

Step-by-step sequences with expected values, acceptance criteria and a sign-off line for each. Written so a competent technician who has never seen the building can run them and a witness can follow along.

The reconciled sequence of operation

One narrative that the switchgear, generator, UPS and controls procedures all agree with — including the timing windows that only matter when a transfer is happening and nobody has time to look anything up.

An issues log, with the discrepancies named

Every contradiction found between submittals, drawings and vendor procedures, written down with a recommendation. In practice this is the part clients quote back to their vendors, and often the part that pays for the package.

The load bank and failure-mode plan

Where a Level 5 framework is in scope: step loading, rejection, paralleling and failure scenarios sequenced so the integrated test proves something rather than merely finishing.

How the work runs

A single-system scope runs about two working weeks; a full building is three weeks, 15 business days. Larger and phased scopes stretch the middle, not the shape.

Days one and two — intake

Submittal set, one-lines, the sequence of operation, and the asset list. A short call to establish what the owner actually cares about proving, which is not always what the specification says.

Days three to six — reconciliation

Vendor procedures read side by side against the submittals. This is where the contradictions surface, and where the issues log gets written. Anything that looks like a genuine design question is raised immediately rather than saved for the report.

Days seven to nine — drafting

Checklists and functional procedures written into your platform, in your numbering, so they drop into the program without anybody rekeying them.

Day ten — review and handover

A working session over the draft, and the issues log walked through line by line. One comment round is included — a single consolidated markup set within 5 business days of delivery. Additional rounds are quoted separately.

What's needed from your side

Short list, and the package cannot start without the first three.

  • The approved submittal set for the assets in scope
  • Electrical one-lines at the current revision
  • The sequence of operation, in whatever state it is actually in
  • The asset list or equipment schedule, and your numbering convention
  • Access to the commissioning platform, or a template export from it
  • One named point of contact who can answer a design question inside a day

The sequence of operation does not need to be finished. Half the value of the reconciliation is finding out where it stops matching the equipment that actually got bought — so send the version that exists, not the version you wish existed.

What sits outside the fee

Named here rather than discovered at invoice.

  • Travel and site time, unless site days are written into the scope
  • Test equipment, load banks and the labor to operate them
  • Engineering design, stamped drawings, and studies requiring a licensed PE
  • Scope growth after the asset list is fixed — repriced, not absorbed quietly
  • Rewrites arising from a design change made after handover

Every engagement runs under a written scope of work, priced on deliverables and dates rather than hours. Professional and general liability are placed at engagement. No client's confidential methods or materials ever carry between projects — what travels is pattern and standard, and nothing else.

Send a submittal set and an asset count.

That is enough to put a band, a fee and a date against the work — usually within a day, and before anybody commits to anything.