Case Study: What a 3 Million Square Foot Facility Taught Us About Operational Knowledge
Large facilities often contain decades of accumulated operational knowledge. Preserving access to that knowledge can be as important as maintaining the equipment itself.
When most people think about building commissioning, they think about equipment. They imagine technicians checking temperatures, testing alarms, verifying sequences of operation, and ensuring systems perform as intended. Those activities are certainly part of the process, but one of the most valuable lessons of my career came from a project that taught me something entirely different. The lesson was not about chillers, pumps, controls, or even energy performance. It was about knowledge, and how easily organizations can lose access to it.
Several years ago, I became involved in what was, at the time, the largest retro-commissioning project undertaken by Los Angeles County. The project included the Men’s Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, two massive facilities located across the street from one another in downtown Los Angeles. Together they encompassed approximately three million square feet of highly complex institutional space supported by extensive utility infrastructure, including a central plant containing roughly two million gallons of thermal energy storage. The scale of the facilities was impressive, but it was not their size that left the lasting impression. What proved most memorable was the realization that the buildings knew far more than anyone could easily access.
The equipment was still there. The chilled water systems were still operating. The utility plant continued producing cooling. Operators came to work each day and the facilities continued serving their intended purpose. Yet as the project progressed, it became increasingly apparent that much of the understanding required to fully operate and optimize these systems had become difficult to locate. Personnel had changed. Contractors had come and gone. Projects had been completed, modifications had been implemented, and countless decisions had been made for reasons that were no longer entirely clear. Documentation existed in various forms, but documentation alone rarely tells the whole story. The buildings retained the results of decades of operational experience, but the pathways connecting that knowledge to the people responsible for the facilities had become fragmented.
The situation became especially evident as we began evaluating the control systems. At Men’s Central Jail, many of the original pneumatic controls were barely functioning. Dampers had been propped open. Control loops had been bypassed. Valves had been overridden. Years of operational adjustments had gradually moved portions of the facility further and further away from their original design intent. The challenge was not simply identifying deficiencies. The challenge was understanding what the systems were intended to do in the first place. New DDC controls were ultimately specified, installed, and commissioned, but meaningful improvement required more than technology. It required rebuilding operational understanding.
The situation at Twin Towers was different, yet the lesson was remarkably similar. The central plant remained operational, but confidence in automatic operation had eroded over time. As a result, much of the plant was operated in HAND mode. Existing controls infrastructure remained in place, but reliable sequences were difficult to identify and operational intent had become increasingly unclear. Before improvements could be made, the plant first had to be understood. Input and output points were evaluated. Equipment functionality was verified. Start-stop commands were tested. Valves and control devices were assessed. A controls programmer was brought into the project, and new operating sequences were developed to support reliable plant operation. Before optimization could occur, the facility had to rediscover how it was intended to function.
Perhaps the most significant challenge was that neither facility possessed reliable as-built documentation. Before systems could be improved, they first had to be understood. Part of the assignment became documenting what actually existed, how systems were interconnected, and how they were intended to operate. In many respects, the project became an exercise in rebuilding institutional memory. We found ourselves asking questions that had likely been asked before. Why was a particular sequence implemented? What circumstances led to a specific modification? Which operational issues had already been investigated years earlier? The answers often existed somewhere within the history of the facility, but recovering them required patience, investigation, and a willingness to follow clues wherever they led.
In that sense, the project reminded me of lessons I had learned much earlier in my controls career. Buildings communicate continuously through their behavior. Temperatures tell a story. Pressures tell a story. Equipment operation tells a story. Energy consumption tells a story. The challenge is rarely the absence of information. The challenge is learning how to listen. As testing progressed and patterns emerged, the facilities gradually revealed themselves. Relationships that were not immediately obvious became clearer. Operational practices that had evolved over many years began to make sense. Opportunities for improvement appeared not because someone suddenly invented new knowledge, but because existing knowledge was reconnected and made visible.
The buildings had not forgotten. In many respects, they remembered quite well. The controls remembered. The equipment remembered. The operating conditions remembered. Fragments of knowledge existed throughout the facilities. What had been lost was access. The information remained present, but the pathways required to understand it had become increasingly difficult to navigate.
That realization continues to influence the way I think about facilities today. We often assume that our greatest assets are physical. Chillers, boilers, control systems, electrical infrastructure, and mechanical equipment are certainly important, but every facility possesses another asset that is equally valuable and often more vulnerable. It is the accumulated understanding of how the facility actually operates. Unlike equipment, that knowledge can quietly disappear without anyone noticing. Experienced personnel retire. Reports are archived. Projects conclude. Years later, organizations find themselves solving the same problems again, not because the answers were unavailable, but because the answers became difficult to reach.
Looking back, the most important lesson from the Men’s Central Jail and Twin Towers project had very little to do with retro-commissioning itself. The project demonstrated that facilities are constantly teaching us something. Every startup, every repair, every investigation, every test, and every operational adjustment contributes to a growing body of knowledge. Organizations that preserve and apply those lessons place themselves in a stronger position to operate, maintain, and improve their facilities over time. Those that do not often find themselves repeating a familiar cycle of rediscovery.
The buildings already know much of what we need to understand. The question is whether we are preserving what they have taught us—or preparing to learn the same lessons all over again.