Certification Management

A Tier objective describes the infrastructure performance the business needs: what must keep running during planned maintenance, what must survive a failure, at which phase and installed capacity. Treated as a submission to be assembled at the end, it produces late surprises and expensive remediation. Treated as a design discipline from the first schematic, it produces a facility whose drawings, narratives, equipment and test evidence agree with each other, which is what the certifier assesses.

UBIK manages the pathway in that second sense. The scheme, scope, phase and capacity are agreed at the start, with an owner for every piece of evidence. Uptime Institute Tier certification and LEED have different objectives and different evidence, and neither is treated as a by-product of the other; a facility can pursue both, and the two pathways are planned together so that the energy and water evidence serves each.

The gap analysis reads the single-line diagrams, the cooling schematics, the control sequences and the operating narratives the way the assessor will read them: path by path, state by state. Every element that cannot be taken out of service with the load supported, every isolation point in the wrong place, every control sequence that depends on a single device, is listed with the remediation and its consequence for the programme and the cost.

Found at schematic design, most gaps are corrected on the drawings. Found after the switchgear is ordered, they become a change order and a programme delay. UBIK therefore carries out the gap analysis at schematic design.

Tier Certification of Design Documents assesses the design. Tier Certification of Constructed Facility assesses the facility as built and includes demonstrations of its behaviour under failure and maintenance states, performed on site under the assessor’s witness. Tier Certification of Operational Sustainability assesses the management and operating practices that keep the performance over time. One does not imply the others, and the gap between the first two is where most projects lose time.

UBIK keeps the evidence consistent across the three. Changes in procurement and construction are checked against the certified design; drawings, calculations, narratives and test results are kept in agreement; and the constructed-facility demonstrations are scheduled with the integrated systems test, so that one set of witnessed results serves both the certification and the client’s acceptance.

Uptime Institute assesses and awards its certifications. The LEED certifying body assesses and awards LEED. UBIK coordinates the pathway, prepares the facility and its evidence, plans the demonstrations and supports the submission and the audit. The award itself rests with the certifying body.