Startup is not commissioning
Most manufacturers sell a startup visit. A factory technician addresses the devices, confirms they communicate, loads a default program and leaves. That work matters, but it answers a narrow question: does the hardware work?
Commissioning answers the question you actually care about: does the building behave the way it was designed to? Does the open office dim when daylight is strong enough? Does the warehouse aisle drop to its low level after the forklift passes, and come back before the next one arrives? Does the after-hours sweep run on holidays? Does anyone know what the override button in the break room does?
When those questions go unanswered, occupants answer them for you. They tape over sensors, prop switches and call facilities until someone sets everything to “on”. Industry research on networked controls keeps finding the same barrier: a bad first experience with a poorly configured system makes owners wary of controls for years.
Why multi-brand matters
Commercial buildings rarely have one controls ecosystem. A typical building in our region might have:
- a wired room-control system in the offices, installed during the last renovation;
- wireless luminaire-level controls in the warehouse, added with an LED retrofit;
- a separate exterior and parking controller on a photocell and time clock;
- a building automation system that would like occupancy data but never gets it.
Each manufacturer will start up its own products. Nobody tests how the whole building behaves. That gap is where we work. We are not tied to a manufacturer, so we test the sequences rather than defend a product line, and we write down what we find.
What we test, specifically
| Sequence | What “pass” looks like |
|---|---|
| Occupancy / vacancy | Lights respond within the designed delay; vacancy-only spaces never turn on automatically |
| Daylight response | Zones within the daylight area dim proportionally; no visible hunting or flicker at dusk |
| High-end trim | Maximum output matches the trim schedule; measured illuminance meets the design target |
| Scheduling | After-hours sweep, holiday calendar and shift changes behave as written |
| Overrides | Manual overrides time out as designed and are logged |
| Demand response | A test signal sheds the designed amount of load and restores it |
| Integration | Occupancy and energy points reach the BMS or Lytbit Ledger with correct names and units |
The paperwork is part of the product
The configuration report and test logs are what keep a system working after we leave. When a technician replaces a sensor three years from now, they need to know what it was set to and why. When a utility program or code official asks for functional testing documentation, you should be able to send it in minutes, not reconstruct it.
We store every deliverable in your Lytbit Ledger workspace and export it as PDF and CSV, so the records outlive any vendor relationship, including ours.
When to call us
- Before the drywall closes on new construction, so testing is in the schedule rather than squeezed in after occupancy.
- Before a utility incentive deadline, when functional testing documentation is a condition of payment.
- When complaints start, because most of them are configuration, not hardware.
- Every few years, as a re-commissioning pass: buildings change and controls should follow.
If you are not sure where your system stands, a Baseline Assessment includes a sample functional test of representative spaces and tells you whether full commissioning is worth it.
