Retro-Commissioning & Energy Management
Find the waste, fix it, and prove it — functional testing, sequence tuning, measurement and utility incentive documentation.
Retro-commissioning is the cheapest energy project available to an existing building, because most waste is not missing equipment — it is equipment fighting itself. Simultaneous heating and cooling, minimum airflows set too high, static pressure never reset, economizers stuck closed, pumps running at 60 Hz around the clock, and schedules that were overridden years ago.
Our process is deliberately unglamorous: gather utility and BAS trend data, walk every major system, functionally test what the sequences claim to do, quantify each deficiency, and give you a ranked list with cost, savings and payback. Then — because we are the mechanical contractor — we execute the fixes: valve and damper repairs, actuator replacement, sensor calibration, coil cleaning, sequence rewrites, VFD and reset optimization, and TAB where airflow is off.
We close the loop with measurement. Post-implementation trending and utility bill comparison show what actually changed, and the documentation supports SDG&E and statewide incentive claims, Title 24 alteration compliance, benchmarking and LEED O+M or ENERGY STAR reporting.
Scope & capabilities
- Utility bill and BAS trend analysis, load profiling and benchmarking
- Deficiency logs with cost, savings and payback ranking
- Repair execution — valves, dampers, actuators, sensors, coils, VFDs
- Measurement and verification after implementation
- LEED O+M, ENERGY STAR and benchmarking support
- System walkthroughs and functional performance testing
- Sequence rewrites: reset strategies, staging, scheduling, economizer logic
- Air and water balancing corrections where flows are off design
- Utility incentive applications and Title 24 alteration documentation
The technical envelope
- Typical savings
- 8 – 25% of HVAC energy in un-commissioned buildings
- Deliverables
- Findings report, ranked measures, revised sequences, M&V report
- Instruments
- Data loggers, flow meters, combustion and power analyzers
- Incentives
- SDG&E and statewide program documentation support
- Execution
- Same contractor identifies and fixes — no hand-off gap
Facility types
Retro-Commissioning & Energy — straight answers
- How is this different from an energy audit?
- An audit produces a report. Retro-commissioning produces a working building: we test the systems, correct the sequences and repair the hardware, then verify results with trend data and utility bills.
- What is the usual payback?
- Most measures we recommend land between six months and three years, because they are repairs and sequence corrections rather than capital equipment. Where a longer-payback capital item is justified, we present it separately with the incentive contribution included.
- Do you need our BAS trend data?
- It helps enormously, and if trending was never set up we configure it first. Two to four weeks of good trend data usually reveals more than a week of walkthroughs.
Get a number you can budget against
We walk the plant before we price it. You get equipment condition, options, phasing and a schedule — not a guess with a contingency wrapped around it.