2018 Commissioning Giants

The 2018 Commissioning Giants data reports on the top firms that elected to enter the program this year. Here’s a look at the top 25 firms.

By Amara Rozgus, Editor-in-Chief October 11, 2018

The 2018 Commissioning (Cx) Giants reports the top 25 firms based on whether they chose to be considered in this year’s rankings. The average percentage of commissioning revenue earned by the 2018 Commissioning Giants was approximately 26%, showing that these top 25 firms earn a great deal of their revenue from commissioning, some earning as much as 100% of their revenue solely from commissioning.

For the 2018 report, the top 25 companies made $241.6 million in revenue. The majority (56%) of firms are consulting-engineering firms with a commissioning division. Firms new to the list this year (in order of ranking):

  • McKinstry
  • Horizon Engineering Associates LLP
  • CBRE | Heery
  • Chinook Systems Inc.
  • Heapy Engineering
  • Sindoni Consulting & Management Services Inc.
  • International Commissioning Engineers
  • Bernhard TME LLC
  • Farnsworth Group Inc.
  • M.E. GROUP
  • Salas O’Brien
  • Dewberry

The average commissioning fee per project varied. Four in 10 companies earned $100,001 to $300,000, 32% earned $50,001 to $100,000, and 24% earned $25,001 to $50,000.

This data reflects commissioning at all levels: new or existing buildings, whole building, recommissioning, monitoring-based, fire protection systems, emergency power systems, building enclosure (envelope), communications systems, and retro-commissioning. The 25 firms completed, on average, 179 commissioning projects (at any level) in 2017.

The good and bad of commissioning

According to survey respondents, these firms were contracted to complete commissioning for a variety of reasons: mandates (codes, standards, benchmarking: 100%), savings (energy efficiency, lower lifecycle cost: 96%), and sustainability (long-term materials and performance efficiency: 92%.) Other reasons included resiliency (76%) and marketability of the property (60%).

Several new questions were introduced in the 2018 Commissioning Giants report related directly to challenges for these firms. The top three current challenges are:

  • Staffing: quality of young commissioning professionals (16%).
  • Evolving information technologies for design or project management (12%).
  • The economy’s impact on the construction market (12%).

Future challenges varied. The No. 1 challenge was the “lack of knowledge about commissioning’s worth,” with 8 in 10 respondents saying it was a problem. Not far behind at 69% was “lack of funding or buy-in (from owners, engineers, etc.) to conduct commissioning.” Codes and standards changing, typically a No. 1 response in other Consulting-Specifying Engineer studies, ranked No. 3 at 28%.


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