With a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the household sector by 40% by 2030, making buildings more energy efficient, is a pressing issue for Japan. Commissioning is defined as a process carried out to confirm that the actual performance attains the intended performance of building systems[1]. It is imperative that Japan establishes commissioning to be able to achieve substantial energy savings in buildings. Commissioning calls to mind the fine-tuning (optimization) after the start of building operation, although its analysis is certainly not limited to the operation stage. Commissioning should not be conducted intermittently in spots, but rather continuously like a straight line to encompass all stages from the preliminary design to actual building operations. At any rate, it would be impossible to bring out the desired performance no matter how much fine-tuning were done if the original design and construction were inadequate. In order to verify the performance at the operation stage, instrumentation and measurements have to be planned well ahead in the design stage to collect the necessary information for performance verification. I believe that the challenge for Japan in the future is in establishing this linear commissioning process.

From April 2017, compliance with the Building Energy Efficiency Standards will be mandatory for non-residential buildings of 2000 m2 and over. Along with this, buildings will be required to undergo compliance tests. This means undergoing a third-party review (by a government agency with jurisdiction or a registered institution for building performance tests on energy use) from the perspective of energy efficiency in the design stage. Moreover, during completion inspection under the Building Standards Act, buildings will have to undergo inspection for adoption of equipment and control systems with the performance as written in the design documents. In the field of building services, there has been no culture for undergoing strict design and construction inspections from third parties from the standpoint of energy savings. As energy efficiency of buildings becomes more socially important, third-party reviews and social accountability on various building design aspects will be required. Indeed, this mandatory conformance to the Energy Efficiency Standards is just the start of this trend. To avoid confusion for the time being, there are no plans yet to require strict onsite verification of performance during completion inspection for control, for example, although a scheme will eventually have to be drawn for checking whether building facilities perform as declared in the original design documents. This is precisely the principle behind commissioning. In the future, I believe that commissioning will have to be a part of regulations to realize substantial energy savings.

Standardizing the evaluation process and judgment criteria is indispensable to putting commissioning into regulations. To make third-party reviews fair and reliable, the definitions and processes involved have to be clear (and standardized) so that the rules are understandable even to a lay person. For example, commissioning has taken root in society in the United States due to the capabilities and definitions of commissioning described in the ASHRAE Guideline 0[2], which were then cited in LEED and other certification systems[3]. This resulted in a large amount of implemented project commissioning, and led to a better understanding of the issues[4]. The terms and definitions of processes were thereafter revised to resolve these issues, and published in the ASHRAE Standard 202 in 2013[5]. Meanwhile, a consensus on the principles and other details of commissioning was reached in Japan, and the Building Services Commissioning Manual published by the Building Services Commissioning Association was revised in November 2016[6]. Going forward, I believe that this is the start of a full-scale spreading phase revolving around the manual.
However, although a consensus had been reached as to what commissioning is in Japan and the United States, a unified methodology on how to verify the performance of building systems (methodologies for functional performance tests) has yet to be standardized. Accordingly, international standardization of the commissioning process for building environment design is underway at the ISO/TC 205/WG 10, where ISO standards of functional performance test procedures for several leading systems are currently being developed[7]. The standards do not simply spell out the test procedures; they also attempt to specify provisions on how to collect the necessary information for tests at the design stage, how to graph the collected data, and how to determine whether adequate performance is exhibited. I was involved in the Yonden Building Project[8] as a member of the commissioning team. Although plans were made to measure a wide variety of data to verify the performance of this building, the required data for verification were still incomplete, and I remember going out in freezing temperatures at the end of the year to install measuring instruments at the site to get data around the total heat exchanger and cooling tower. I think this was because the required information for functional performance tests had not been standardized. If standards are set, then the required information for the tests can be prepared in advance, and a design that encompasses performance verification not just at certain points but throughout the line—a forward-looking design—can be produced.
As I mentioned at the outset, commissioning has to be established to be able to achieve significant energy savings in buildings. To establish commissioning, it is critical that the process be clearly explained and understood even by non-specialists, and not just those who are knowledgeable on the subject. To that end, strict rules (standards) have to be thoroughly laid out more than ever before.

[1] Building Services Commissioning Association: What is Commissioning?
http://www.bsca.or.jp/outline/commissioning.html
[2] ASHRAE:ASHRAE Guideline 0 - The Commissioning Process
[3] U.S. Green Building Council:LEED v4 Fundamental commissioning and verification
　　http://www.usgbc.org/node/2732691?return=/credits/commercial-interiors/v4
[4] Stephen C. Turner, et al.: Commissioning Design Build Projects, ASHRAE Journal, p54-64, 2012. 10
[6] ASHRAE:ASHRAE Standard 202-2013 - Commissioning Process for Buildings and Systems
[7] Building Services Commissioning Association: Building Services Commissioning Manual 、http://www.bsca.or.jp/news-letter/news/870/
[8] Institute of International Harmonization for Building and Housing: ISO/TC 205 http://www.iibh.org/tc205.htm