Late OPR and the Owner's Budget Deadline
A hospital district is commissioning a new 60,000 sq ft outpatient clinic. The owner's capital committee approves funding in six weeks. The architect has issued 60% design drawings. The Cx firm was hired only last week. The owner's facilities director hands over a two-page "wish list" written by the CEO and says, "That's our OPR, just format it." The mechanical engineer has already sized the chilled water plant around a 400-ton central chiller and a 150-ton backup. The facilities director privately tells the CxA that the real concern is redundancy during chiller maintenance, not energy. The design team says any change now would blow the schedule. The CxA has 10 business days before a design review gate.
1. What should the CxA do in the next 10 business days, and what should the CxA explicitly refuse to do?
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The CxA should not simply reformat the CEO's wish list into an OPR. A CEO wish list may contain aspirations, but an OPR must state measurable owner requirements: operational, indoor environmental, energy, maintainability, and redundancy needs. The CxA should run a facilitated OPR workshop with the facilities director, clinical operations, infection control, and the design team, and capture the stated redundancy requirement in writing.
The critical judgment is that the facilities director's concern is an owner requirement that the design may not satisfy. A 400-ton primary plus 150-ton backup may not provide the redundancy the owner actually needs if peak load exceeds 150 tons during maintenance. The CxA should quantify the requirement (for example, "full clinical load maintainable with any one chiller out of service") and ask the engineer to demonstrate compliance against the 60% load calculations.
The CxA should refuse to certify that the two-page document is an adequate OPR, and should refuse to let the schedule pressure suppress a material owner requirement. Instead, issue a written OPR gap memo within 5 days and propose a design-review agenda item. If the owner accepts the risk in writing, document that acceptance; the CxA's job is to surface it, not to overrule the owner.
2. The design team argues that changing the plant now will delay the funding approval. How should the CxA frame the trade-off to the owner?
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The CxA should frame the decision in owner language: cost of change now versus cost of underperformance later. A plant redundancy shortfall discovered during functional performance testing, after funding approval and construction, is far more expensive than a design-phase chiller selection change. The CxA can present three options with consequences: (1) proceed as designed and accept a documented redundancy gap; (2) revise the plant now, accepting a possible funding delay; (3) defer the decision to a design-build alternate but require the contractor to demonstrate redundancy in the PFT.
The CxA should avoid making the engineering decision. The CxA's role is to ensure the owner understands the requirement, the gap, and the risk, and that the decision is documented. A short written risk register entry with owner sign-off is appropriate. If the owner chooses option 1, the CxA records the accepted risk and ensures the O&M manuals and training reflect the actual operating limitation.