Developing a commissioning plan is crucial to implementing a successful commissioning process. The plan outlines each team member’s role and commissioning responsibilities for a project and includes a schedule and scope of commissioning activities. This “living” document is likely to change over the course of a project.

Ideally, the initial development of the commissioning plan occurs in the early stages of design. The commissioning provider develops and maintains the plan. However, if a commissioning provider has not already been contracted in the early phases of the design process, the owner’s representative or lead designer can begin the basic development of the plan. Initially this could include mapping out some of the major commissioning milestones of the project and making each team member who will be involved with the commissioning process aware that commissioning will occur. Once a commissioning provider is selected for the project, he or she develops the formalized plan with substantial input from the other commissioning team members.

This appendix includes outlines for Design Phase and Construction Phase commissioning plans.