Goal of the project
The project delivered two new buildings at UBC’s Lots 5 & 6 — an 18-storey tower and a 6-storey mass timber mid-rise — providing staff and student housing. Heating for both buildings is supplied by the UBC district energy system through an existing energy transfer station on site, with an air-cooled chiller on the roof of each building serving cooling loads. With the buildings leased for September 2025 occupancy, the commissioning programme had to be delivered on a fixed and immovable schedule, across a large quantity of mechanical devices and extensive BACnet networks extending to a thermostat controller in every suite.
How did KCx achieve goal
The combination of device count and schedule made conventional sequential testing impractical. KCx Engineering addressed this by batching commissioning tests to run overnight, with automated pass/fail evaluation and diagnostics generated from the data recorded during each test — a data-driven process facilitated by the platform developed with our sister company, clistek.io.
This approach allowed our team to execute testing remotely and at scale — covering the full population of suite controllers and mechanical devices across both buildings without extending the programme or compressing the quality of verification. Rather than sampling or accepting reduced coverage to meet the date, every test produced a recorded data set and a documented result.
Both buildings were commissioned in time for the September 2025 occupancy date, with the district energy connection, building-level cooling plants, and suite-level controls verified as operating to design intent.
