The Commissioning Record, the Certificates, and What Handover Actually Means

Three years after handover the top-floor tenant complains of poor pressure. Was it always like that? The only honest answer is on the commissioning record.

The short answer

The commissioning record is the proof that the system does what the design said it would. It is kept for reference during maintenance, it is the baseline a fault is measured against years later, and in a non-domestic building it feeds the Legionella records that HSE ACOP L8 requires.

BS EN 806-4 requires a complete record of the pressure test, of the flushing, and of the disinfection and its results, each handed to the building owner. BS EN 806-5 makes the commissioning report part of the documentation kept for the life of the installation.

What goes on it

What does not

Payment terms belong to the contract and the invoice. Delivery dates of plant, the supplier of the copper tube, the brand of flux or solder, the weather, the vehicle registration and the time you arrived on site are none of them commissioning results.

The names and qualifications of the installers, and the method statements and permits used during installation, belong in the health and safety file and the water management logbook — though the record does name the person or company who carried out the disinfection.

Under ACOP L8 paragraph 72, records of monitoring, inspection, tests and checks are kept for at least five years.

When commissioning finds a fault

Commissioning is the first time the system runs, so it is when problems appear — and finding them is what commissioning is for. The rule is: correct items failing any test immediately and re-test them before further work proceeds. A defect is never carried forward or left for the maintenance contractor to find.

What you do next depends on the kind of defect, and the split between "yours to fix" and "somebody else's decision" is examined:

• A leak or pressure drop on test — locate and repair, then repeat the whole test.
• A component that does not match the specification — report it to your manager. Accepting a substitution is not your decision.
• Flow or pressure below specification — if pipe sizes are too small the shortfall appears immediately downstream of the mistake. Check the drawings and confirm the sizes with the design engineer before acting. If the pump set or accumulator is wrongly set up, follow the manufacturer's set-up procedure and, if it still fails, contact technical support.
• A defective component — do not attempt a repair, which can void the warranty. Contact the manufacturer and supplier, who may wish to inspect before replacement.
• Noise or vibration — usually missing or wrongly spaced clips. Add supports.
• Cold water warming above 20 °C — pipework run too close to hot pipes. Insulate or re-route.
• Microbiological contamination — disinfect, resample, take specialist advice.

Every defect and its remedy goes on the record, with the retest that proved it fixed, and nothing is handed over until the retest passes.

Notification, seen from the other end

Two jobs, same week. A new bathroom in a private house, and a new-build house waiting for its service connection. The customer on the first asks whether the water company has to be told. The site agent on the second assumes it does not. Both have it the wrong way round.

Work in a private house that is only an extension or alteration is not notifiable, because item 2 of the Regulation 5 Table says "premises other than a house". So the new bathroom needs no notice. But before a new house is connected the undertaker must have been notified, because erecting a building is item 1, and consent is needed before the fittings are installed and connected.

Both traps cut against instinct: a big job in a house can be done without a word to the water company; a modest new build cannot. The test is which line of the Table the work sits on, not its size.

And the last step, easily forgotten: when all tests have passed, the water supplier is told the system is ready for permanent connection.

The certificates

Whether you can write a certificate of compliance depends on one thing: whether you are an approved contractor — approved by the undertaker for the area, or certified by an organisation specified in writing by the regulator.

Under Regulation 6, an approved contractor must on completion give a signed certificate of compliance to the person who commissioned the work, and where the work was notifiable, send a copy to the undertaker.

The reason it matters is Regulation 7(2): the owner or occupier has a statutory defence only where the work was done by an approved contractor and the contractor certified it. Approval without a certificate fails. A certificate from somebody not approved fails too.

Separately, Building Control wants its own paperwork — a completion notice on a building notice or full plans route, or a competent person's certificate within 30 days.

What handover actually means

Handover is not dropping an envelope through the door. The customer gets three things: the documents, a demonstration, and the knowledge to act in an emergency.

The handover file holds the undertaker's acceptance, the compliance certificates, the commissioning records, the as-fitted drawings and every manufacturer's instruction book. Where the building has a water management regime, it also holds the schematic diagrams and the log the next engineer will write in.

The demonstration is the part people skip and the part customers remember. Walk them round and explain the working principles of the controls — what the booster set does and what its alarm means, what the softener needs, how the WC servicing valves work. Show them the isolation points, and make them turn the stop valve themselves once, so they know it moves and where it is at two in the morning.

Then the record goes in the logbook, and the system stops being your job and starts being theirs — with a written baseline so that in three years, when the top-floor tenant complains, there is an honest answer to "was it always like that".