Over the past century, and particularly over the past 20 years, many innovations have been implemented in health care facility design in order to enhance the hospital experience for patients and health care professionals and to reduce the risk of exacerbating patients’ conditions due to facility-related factors.

This leads to a very complex and wonderful facility, but how does one know that all of these features are working and/ or prepared to work when called upon in an emergency? Unfortunately, the standard design and construction process used for new construction and renovation projects does not typically result in a high level of confidence that building systems are functional. Building systems commissioning is a process that has been developed to integrate into and fill this void in the traditional design and construction process.

Paper from IAQ 2004 -- Critical Operations: Supporting the Healing Environment Through IAQ Performance Standards