Commissioning and Certification

Laboratory certification is very different from building commissioning. These are two separate services and it is crucial to identify the differences to ensure that your laboratory is functioning to the highest standard. Simply stated, commissioning is part and parcel of the construction process. Commissioning is a quality process for validating and documenting that a facility and its systems are planned, design, installed, tested and capable of being operated and maintained to perform in conformity with the design intent. Commissioning partially focuses on engineering controls compliance, but from the overall building operation's perspective.

Third-party laboratory certification is a biosafety risk assessment and facility validation which occurs after beneficial occupancy. All moveable equipment has been put into place and the laboratory is ready for occupancy and research. Certification requires the interaction of the certification team (biocontainment engineers and biosafety professionals) with the facility’s biosafety officers, principal investigators, researchers, operational personnel and the Owner’s senior management to ensure that that the biocontainment facility’s systems work in conjunction with the laboratory-specific mission and organizational practices to establish integrity of the biocontainment facility’s containment.

Having the commissioning agent or certification firm expand their scope of work to conduct both the commissioning and the certification is a conflict of interest in validating the data collected in the public court of opinion.