Major activities

Outline of Fiscal 2010 Activities

Major activities

1. Seminars, Symposiums
Through meetings we plan to propagate the concept and merits of commissioning process among relating parties of building construction in Japan.

2.  Homepage design and maintenance
Through the homepage BSCA let members and non-members inform of seminars, symposiums and other meetings, procedure for membership and outlines of R&D and commissioning project. It will also provide news on commissioning infrastructure such as commissioning tools, manuals and guidelines, business models and education and training courses now under preparation.
http://www.bsca.or.jp/: in Japanese
http://www.bsca.or.jp/english/ : in English

3. Publication of newsletters
We publish newsletters once a month as a principle to provide members reports and news source introducing general trend of building commissioning with international sense. Opinion column is open for members BSCA.

           See summaries of BSCA Commissioning Letters, in Japanese.

4. Enforcement of the entrusted research
As a part of social enlightenment activity, we accept research/survey entrustment on the subjects concerning commissioning process.

5. Implementation of actual commissioning business
In order to accumulate know-how on practical commissioning implementation, transfer the knowledge to BSCA members through commissioning tools and model documents and contribute improving quality and fairness of the building trade in Japan, we try to carry out substantial number of projects.

           See Annex 40 reported projects

6. Qualification of Commissioning Engineers

The commissioning engineer by BSCA qualification is basically classified into CxPE (commissioning professional engineer) and CxTE (commissioning technical engineer). The CxPE is qualified as CxPF(BE/PH), where BE means 'building element' but actually in case of building services systems means HVAC, lighting, sanitary system, etc., and PH means 'phase' depending on his professional expertise such as program, design, construction, etc.

             See the BSCA qualification map (from Urgent Workshop, Tokyo) .

The CxPE will be qualified as CxAC (commissioning authority candidate) when he will have acquired sufficient experience on commissioning business and get to used to management of whole initial commissioning process. The, CA (commissioning authority) will be hired among CxACs when the client of a new building construction wish to hire a commissioning authority qualified as independent from the design and construction companies for the present specific project. This idea comes from the fact that most of the qualified persons belongs to design and/or construction companies and that the independent commissioning engineers are seldom found, as the commissioning business, especially of the new construction, is still unpopular in Japan. The list of CxPE is introduced on BSCA homepage.

The CxTE is the professional engineers or technicians who are accustomed to special fields of technologies, such as 1) testing, measurements and control tuning, 2) actual data analysis, performance evaluation and numerical simulations and 3) whole system performance simulation using commercial simulation programs such as HASP/ACSS, LCEM, HVACSIM+(J), Energy+, etc. Tentatively the CxTE is classified into three for these three categories. The CxTE qualification has not started yet and now under public discussion.

7. The sponsorship of international conferences
We promote to plan and sponsor international conferences such as Asia Pacific Conference on Building Commissioning(APCBC), in corporation with foreign commissioning organizations, and universities. The IEA/ECBCS/Annex47, National Conference on Building Commissioning (NCBC), Portland Energy Conservation Inc.(PECI), International Conference on Enhancing Building Operation(ICEBO), Texas A&M University, Tsinghua University, Hong Kong Building Commissioning Center(HKBCxC), etc. are cooperating bodies.

            See APCBC#1 'opening address'

            See APCBC#2 'opening address'

            See APCBC#3 'Life Cycle Cx'

            See NCBC 2004 'Annex 40, MQC, Cx Process Tool'

            See NCBC 2006 'Promoting Cx process in Japan'

            See NCBC 2007 'Overview on Activities of BCx in Asia and Japan'         

            See ACEEE paper by CN+NN+HY 'International state on Cx'

            See Urgent Workshop, Tokyo 'Rebuild Japan'

            See Urgent Workshop, Nagoya

8. The domestic and international activities by members
-The Commissioning Committee in the Society of Heating, Air-Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers of Japan
-IEA/ECBCS/Annexes (International Energy Agency/Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems/）
-NCBC (The National Conference on Building Commissioning)


Outline of Fiscal 2010 Activities

Top event of fiscal 2010 has been holding discussion meetings and training course of CxPE that was open to public, one open for BSCA members only and another open to non-BSCA members. The discussion meetings were held in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Fukuoka that were financially supported by the Japan Architectural Education and Information Center. One of the propagation activities was exhibition of updated BSCA posters, which describes history of commissioning and BSCA activities since it was established in 2004, at one of the exhibition booth for the SHASE lecture meeting in September.

Cooperated with and/or financed by Commissioning Committee of SHASE commissioning committee, Public Building Association, Heat Pump and Thermal Storage Center of Japan, Electric Power Companies, Gas companies and other clients of actual commissioning projects, research and developments, qualification of commissioning engineers, development and edition of commissioning manual and textbook, actual commissioning consulting business were performed. Commissioning business infrastructures has thus been prepared, while it is still regrettable that authorization of building commissioning by national and regional governments is not yet established.

The design of BSCA homepage was updated in order to give easy look at interesting topics and easy access to commissioning tools available. The commissioning tool site is principally open to public, however, some proprietary ones shall be put within the site limited to BSCA member only. The site that is considered one of the most meaningful technical site is now under construction. The column assigned at right end includes a quick view to some interesting topics published in the monthly Commissioning Letter, BSCA posters as described above in order to introduce detailed information about BSCA activities to public and the list of BSCA qualified Commissioning Engineers.

Establishing commissioning process guidelines and manuals was one of the most important works assigned to BSCA since the basic guideline had been published by SHASE in 2004 as "SHASE Guidelines, The Commissioning Process of Building Services Systems, SHASE-G-0006-2004". Continual efforts on the Building Commissioning Process Implementation Guidelines had been done combined with the contracted research from Heat Pump and Thermal Storage Center of Japan, which was finalized with the completed documents as 'A guidebook of commissioning process of HVAC with thermal storage, Part I: New building" and  'A guidebook of commissioning process of HVAC with thermal storage, Part II: Existing building".

The BSCA Commissioning Manuals was also edited in course of these efforts of establishing commissioning guidebooks and completed as the reference textbook of BSCA qualification lectures together with separately edited textbook. These works had been supported by Electric power company of Tokyo, Chubu and Osaka, which enable actual qualification activity since 2009. This manual will be published open to public as the formal BSCA commissioning manual.

As the contract research or business, several commissioning implementation begun with the retro-commissioning form. One is energy plant of Kyoto JR station building and the other is a certain district heating and cooling plant with cogeneration system in Nagoya. Quite recently another preparation work for a new building in Nagoya University has initiated commissioning works to begin with documenting OPR. Together with these efforts, availability of simulating/computing tools, MATLAB & Simulink, and HVAC system simulation programs such as LCEM, EnergyPlus, HVACSIM+(J), DeST,made in Tsinghua,Univ., China, etc. has been verified and discussed.

International activities are listed as follows.

-Sponsoring foreign student exchange

-Sponsoring information exchange through NCBC

-Preparation works for the 4th APCBC, pof which rincipal co-organizer having been HKBCxC, but not yet realized.

-Preparation works for the 2nd workshops on Public Building Energy Use, initiated by Tsinghua University, postponed.

-Preparation works for Urgent Meetings at the event of East-Japan Earthquale and Tsunami, held on May 2011 in Nagoya and Tokyo

              See English page program and presentations