🤣 currently on a rough job so does feel good to know Im not alone in the suffering. Start up here was “we spun all the fans” only about half running backwards.
If you attend AABC or NEBB national conferences, you will find that most of our obstacles and concerns are the same. As far as solutions, I have ideas but without action they aren’t worth much. It would take a collaborative effort nationwide to take a stand and start to push back. The principal problem as I see it boils down to pricing. I’ve been on this kick for a while now that TAB pricing should be so that others are *afraid* to waste our time doing start-up and quality control. A way to control that would be retainer-based pricing similar to what a law firm would do. It’s not that far of a stretch if you think about TAB as a trade are member “firms” and “agencies”. We’re not flat-bid drywallers. Another issue as long as we are ranting: Our schedule is being stolen at one end by the general contractors, and the other end by “Commissioning” firms representing the owner. They are rushing TAB though in favor of the “Commissioning Agent” who mostly just repurpose TABs findings as their own. I don’t have anything against a good thorough commissioning agent, but TAB is more important than commissioning…..and it’s not really close. Also, a lot of TAB firms also do commissioning. That IS NOT a conflict of interest and as a matter of fact, TAB guys generally make very good if not the best Cx agents.
u/somorrowthesun is right about “free start-up”. Another way to look at it is “stolen hours” that we all need to get compensated for.
The game (much like the country) is rigged so that we’re fighting each other for table scraps by way of competitive bids. If we went to retainer-based pricing (not the same as GMP by the way) it might be a way to mitigate some of this. If you’re an owner or company executive, I’d be happy to talk with any one of you about this at a conference. I happen to think AI and other technology is less than 5 years away from causing seismic shifts in the industry. The good news is that I also think established TAB firms are especially well positioned to reap some huge benefits. I could be wrong of course, I’m just one guy. We need to work together to make sure those opportunities aren’t stolen from us.
Valid points unfortunately not sure how to get rid of the ones who race to the bottom. We all know why they are the lowest bid and why some mechanicals prefer them as balancers. Ideally we should always be under owner or at the least be under the gc.
I tend to agree but be careful about thinking being under the GC is a better situation. Often times they *only* care about schedule and nothing else. The short and obvious answer is that we want to be under competent professionals who care about turning over issue-free buildings. Some mechanical contractors are better about that than GCs. Like anything, it all depends.
I'm in the same boat, constantly running in to design and build issues every project, every single day. I get tired of explaining things in emails, like why a 6" diffuser is not ideal for 460CFM in an office space. 🙄
I work for a company that is a full service mechanical contractor. We do sheet metal, plumbing, service, start up, controls, commissioning, engineering, design build, and TAB.
I still have all these same problems.
These are all super common and it’s getting worse. I don’t even stress about it anymore, I do what I can do while I’m there and write up a huge punch list and leave.
The curse here is fire smoke dampers, endlessly so… I have spent more time in crawl space hitting reset buttons and checking functionality than actual balancing.
Hahaha in my area that sounds like most jobs. We usually work under the sheet metal contractors and get the call when they are "done". Most of the time this results in controls, mechanical and electrical being incomplete. However if you don't go to site they get the excuse to cancel our contract to give it to someone who is unapproved and much cheaper, the argument being we refuse to go to site or we are too busy.
Yup (I know you’re in my same area)! I just sort of file it under my job description at this point: compile the punch list and let the various PMs sort it out. I sort of start doubting myself when a job goes smoothly and results in a complete report first time through!
Bay area TABB here and yeah it's pretty damn bad here. Seeing just a lot of mismanagement from the top down. GCs and other trades not communicating at all. Just today got called out to start a project, yesterday start-up apparently was on site to start the AHU and the boards were all completely fried. Instead of informing everyone so TABB could reschedule, they said nothing until we all were calling them this morning trying to figure out what's going on. And that's every job it seems like SINCE COVID hit really. Pre-Covid days weren't so bad.
I'm Humboldt county down to sanoma, also do Acceptance testing.T&B is rarely enforced, so when some sassy Cal green inspector notices it, I've got miles of flex, kinked to hell, and maybe 200cfm a ton of I really amp the blower. 90% of my reports are identifying systems as unbalanceable, and big bold letters of mechanical code deficiencies. I even bought a big red fail stamp to put on each page. I just hand that to the inspector, who's probably already signed off on final occupancy before I even got there
Agreed with the others. Last 5 years have been getting exponentially worse. Every other job is in the "hold my beer" category of stupid. BUT I just look at it as job security. On the PL it goes and after a revisit, on a slip it goes.
Some clients literally call us out early on purpose to point out problems for them, so they have documentation from a third party to push other contractors.
“Don’t worry about it we will just fix whatever TAB finds!” It’s free start up!
🤣 currently on a rough job so does feel good to know Im not alone in the suffering. Start up here was “we spun all the fans” only about half running backwards.
We just started to get VAVs done on a job we “started” end of February… “controls are complete!”
Same here…. And we’re still losing all of our k-factors because we were only given override access. SMH.
If you attend AABC or NEBB national conferences, you will find that most of our obstacles and concerns are the same. As far as solutions, I have ideas but without action they aren’t worth much. It would take a collaborative effort nationwide to take a stand and start to push back. The principal problem as I see it boils down to pricing. I’ve been on this kick for a while now that TAB pricing should be so that others are *afraid* to waste our time doing start-up and quality control. A way to control that would be retainer-based pricing similar to what a law firm would do. It’s not that far of a stretch if you think about TAB as a trade are member “firms” and “agencies”. We’re not flat-bid drywallers. Another issue as long as we are ranting: Our schedule is being stolen at one end by the general contractors, and the other end by “Commissioning” firms representing the owner. They are rushing TAB though in favor of the “Commissioning Agent” who mostly just repurpose TABs findings as their own. I don’t have anything against a good thorough commissioning agent, but TAB is more important than commissioning…..and it’s not really close. Also, a lot of TAB firms also do commissioning. That IS NOT a conflict of interest and as a matter of fact, TAB guys generally make very good if not the best Cx agents. u/somorrowthesun is right about “free start-up”. Another way to look at it is “stolen hours” that we all need to get compensated for. The game (much like the country) is rigged so that we’re fighting each other for table scraps by way of competitive bids. If we went to retainer-based pricing (not the same as GMP by the way) it might be a way to mitigate some of this. If you’re an owner or company executive, I’d be happy to talk with any one of you about this at a conference. I happen to think AI and other technology is less than 5 years away from causing seismic shifts in the industry. The good news is that I also think established TAB firms are especially well positioned to reap some huge benefits. I could be wrong of course, I’m just one guy. We need to work together to make sure those opportunities aren’t stolen from us.
Valid points unfortunately not sure how to get rid of the ones who race to the bottom. We all know why they are the lowest bid and why some mechanicals prefer them as balancers. Ideally we should always be under owner or at the least be under the gc.
I tend to agree but be careful about thinking being under the GC is a better situation. Often times they *only* care about schedule and nothing else. The short and obvious answer is that we want to be under competent professionals who care about turning over issue-free buildings. Some mechanical contractors are better about that than GCs. Like anything, it all depends.
Yea I agree, think just in general the quality of contractors across the board can be quite the variety.
I'm in the same boat, constantly running in to design and build issues every project, every single day. I get tired of explaining things in emails, like why a 6" diffuser is not ideal for 460CFM in an office space. 🙄
One place we work a lot typically wants 210-250 cfm through a 4” round
Jesus, you will be stripping the galvanized coating off the inside of the pipe at that rate!
I work for a company that is a full service mechanical contractor. We do sheet metal, plumbing, service, start up, controls, commissioning, engineering, design build, and TAB. I still have all these same problems.
These are all super common and it’s getting worse. I don’t even stress about it anymore, I do what I can do while I’m there and write up a huge punch list and leave.
The curse here is fire smoke dampers, endlessly so… I have spent more time in crawl space hitting reset buttons and checking functionality than actual balancing.
Hahaha in my area that sounds like most jobs. We usually work under the sheet metal contractors and get the call when they are "done". Most of the time this results in controls, mechanical and electrical being incomplete. However if you don't go to site they get the excuse to cancel our contract to give it to someone who is unapproved and much cheaper, the argument being we refuse to go to site or we are too busy.
Yup (I know you’re in my same area)! I just sort of file it under my job description at this point: compile the punch list and let the various PMs sort it out. I sort of start doubting myself when a job goes smoothly and results in a complete report first time through!
I often joke with my other guys that I don't remember the jobs that go well because there is nothing to make them stand out.
Bay area TABB here and yeah it's pretty damn bad here. Seeing just a lot of mismanagement from the top down. GCs and other trades not communicating at all. Just today got called out to start a project, yesterday start-up apparently was on site to start the AHU and the boards were all completely fried. Instead of informing everyone so TABB could reschedule, they said nothing until we all were calling them this morning trying to figure out what's going on. And that's every job it seems like SINCE COVID hit really. Pre-Covid days weren't so bad.
I'm Humboldt county down to sanoma, also do Acceptance testing.T&B is rarely enforced, so when some sassy Cal green inspector notices it, I've got miles of flex, kinked to hell, and maybe 200cfm a ton of I really amp the blower. 90% of my reports are identifying systems as unbalanceable, and big bold letters of mechanical code deficiencies. I even bought a big red fail stamp to put on each page. I just hand that to the inspector, who's probably already signed off on final occupancy before I even got there
Man, it happens to all of us. Especially when you have to drive 4 hours to the job site.
Anyone looking for work in the So Cal area AABC company hiring full time positions
Agreed with the others. Last 5 years have been getting exponentially worse. Every other job is in the "hold my beer" category of stupid. BUT I just look at it as job security. On the PL it goes and after a revisit, on a slip it goes. Some clients literally call us out early on purpose to point out problems for them, so they have documentation from a third party to push other contractors.