This week’s feature release is the long awaited addition of a People section to the Report Generator. Users can now add a People section to their reports, which will include the name of all users in the project, as well as their email, phone number, company, and role.
As with all of our features, we welcome any feedback to help us make any additional improvements.
We’ve previously received a number of reports from users regarding accidental navigation away from a page while editing an item. This week’s update adds a notice warning users of potential data loss, and providing the opportunity for users to verify or cancel any attempts to leave the page before saving.
This warning only applies to the direct edit of an existing item, but the framework for this feature will allow us to to address any future requests for similar functionality in other areas as well.
Generally speaking, we don’t enforce unique names across most sections of CxAlloy TQ. However, this has occasionally led to situations where users accidentally create duplicate entries for companies that already exist.
To address this problem, we have made it so that attempts to add a new company at the project level will default to using the existing account level entry when a duplicate is found.
On selection of an existing company, the form will change to update the existing entry instead of creating a new one.
Additionally, we’ve added the dropdown search that was already being implemented for the project People list to the Account people list as well.
Users can still add a new company with the same name as other existing companies by typing the name in the search dropdown and hitting the Enter/Return key without selecting an existing entry from the dropdown.
With this update, we hope to eliminate the addition of redundant company entries at both the project and account level, while still allowing multiple companies with the same name to exist if desired.
This week’s feature expands on a sort that was added during a previous customer appreciation summer – date updated.
We’ve leveraged that existing functionality to allow users to apply it as a filter. As with other date related filters, the new Date Updated filter lets users select an arbitrary date range from a calendar dropdown. The resultant filtered list will only display items that have been updated within the chosen date range.
What qualifies as an update varies slightly based on the section being filtered, but it generally includes any direct edits to those items, as well as issue creation and file uploads where applicable.
With the addition of this new filter, users will be able to quickly determine whether items of interest have received any new updates.
A forthcoming update to the iOS app will also include this new filtering option.
It’s that time of year again! We are kicking off our fourth annual Customer Appreciation Summer. As in past years, during the summer we will be releasing a new feature every week pulled from the suggestions our customers have made in our feedback forum.
Our focus with these features is on the smaller “quality of life” improvements that can often slip under the radar.
In that spirit, our first Customer Appreciation Summer feature is the ability to sort checklists and tests by line answer percentage. This new sort is called “Percent Progress”.
This new sort option sorts on the number of “Yes” and “N/A” responses within a given checklist or test as a percentage of all answerable lines.
A forthcoming update to the iOS app will also include this new sorting option.
Users can now quickly gauge progress on line items while identifying potential problems or bottlenecks. We’ll be releasing plenty more features in the coming weeks, including some other high demand sorting and filtering options. We hope you’re looking forward to it!
We recently rolled out some great improvements to CxAlloy TQ for web and iOS.
Read on for more details about these features.
Now when you view a PDF in CxAlloy TQ you will see any values previously entered into form fields in that PDF. Please note that you cannot enter new data into forms in CxAlloy TQ.
The “Attached Files” page has been revamped with a cleaner view that features larger thumbnails and more information. This same revamp is on the way for the “Project Files” page as well.
Last year, Apple announced that it would start making its own chips for the Mac, like it already does for iOS devices. An interesting side effect of this was the new ability to run iOS apps on these new Apple Silicon Macs. After some testing and some tweaking of the user interface, we have now made the iOS app available on Apple Silicon Macs. To download it, simply search for “CxAlloy TQ” in the Mac App Store on an Apple Silicon Mac.
When you tap on a CxAlloy TQ link in an email, message, or note on your iOS device, it will launch the app and go to that item in the app instead of the website. This means you can successfully click on links even when you are offline!
If the project or item is not available in the app, the app will automatically pass it on to be opened in your browser instead as before.
If you have multiple Apple devices, you can now browse your project on one device and continue it one another using Handoff. For example, if you are viewing a list of checklists in the iOS app and you bring your phone close to your Mac, you can click the Safari icon in your dock to load the same list of checklists in your browser.
Our final webinar of 2020 was a roadmap of our plans for 2021 and a look back at what we released in 2020, including several features that we launched shortly before the webinar.
If you are a CxAlloy TQ user, you can watch the webinar right now on our training page by clicking the play button below, or read on for a brief synopsis.
Throughout 2020 we focused on features that eliminated friction and administrative overhead in managing the data in your projects. From the many small improvements made during our third Customer Appreciation Summer to the major enhancement of pushing template changes – which allows you to update tens to hundreds of checklists or tests instantly, even when they’re partially completed – you can manage your work in CxAlloy TQ faster than ever.
At the end of the year we also made our markup and callouts feature available to all accounts, allowing you to draw on any image or PDF, and added signatures for those projects that require that extra layer of accountability.
Besides matching the markup and callouts, signatures, and other features that debuted on the web, the iOS app added new features all its own in 2020. From scanning labels so you don’t have to type in serial numbers to batch answering identical checklists and tests, the iOS app empowers you to be more efficient than ever before.
Finally, we released the beta of our Windows app. The Windows app represents a major step forward compared to our previous Chrome-based Windows solution, allowing offline access to multiple projects, adapting to any screen or window size, and featuring a more usable, modern interface. We have built it off of the same battle-tested sync backend as our iOS app so that you can be confident it will have the information you need when you need it.
You can download the Windows app today in the Windows store by clicking below.
We have big plans for the Windows app in 2021 as we work to bring it to full feature parity with our iOS app. Speaking of 2021…
In addition to the Windows app, we have two major initiatives planned for 2021: Custom Phases and Milestones. We believe both of these will greatly expand the ways in which CxAlloy TQ can be used to manage and monitor project progress, giving you greater flexibility in how you organize, report, and track your project data. You can watch the webinar video for more details on our plans for these features as well as information about other planned features.
Of course, we’ll release other, smaller features throughout 2021 as well, so please keep an eye on the blog for details as those roll out. We think 2021 is going to be a great year!
We recently released a major update to CxAlloy TQ with Markup and Callouts, Signatures, a new Account Projects page, and several other improvements.
In this release we made Markup and Callouts, which was previously in beta, available to all accounts while also rolling out improvements based on the feedback we received during the beta.
Markup allows you to annotate images and PDFs with arrows, text overlays, shapes, and freeform drawings. To use these new tools click on an image or PDF and you’ll find new annotation tools available in the toolbar.
Callouts is a feature of Markup which creates thumbnails of any area you annotate with a circle or rectangle. This is particularly useful for multi-page PDFs, as it allows you to easily surface information on any page of the PDF.
Markup is deeply integrated into CxAlloy TQ – when you markup a file those markups are reflected in the image thumbnails, PDF reports, and subsequent file downloads. Markup is available in the iOS app as well, and annotations sync as you would expect.
For those that have been using Markup during our beta period, this release makes several improvements:
With Signatures you can now add signatures to checklists, tests, and templates and users can sign using their mouse or finger (on devices with a touchscreen). Signatures are also available in our iOS app.
When creating checklists and tests from a template, any signatures you have defined on the template are copied over just like lines. Signatures on a checklist or test can then be signed.
Of course, signatures can be included in checklist and test PDFs, and signature activity is now included in history.
Signatures replace the previous “Signature Lines” feature. If you have ongoing projects that need the prior “Signature Lines” functionality, please contact support and we can re-enable it for those projects.
Previously available as a separate “Overview” page, the new Account Projects page includes significant improvements over the simple project list it replaces.
The biggest change is that each project shows it’s dashboard summarizing the status breakdown of issues, checklists, tests, tasks, and equipment. There’s quite a bit more, though, as you can now sort and filter your project list, generate PDF reports, and export the data.
Many of these features were available in its previous incarnation as your account “Overview”, but we made several improvements as we brought it over to replace the projects list.
One note is that the checklist sorts can only sort projects with upgraded checklists. Accounts that have not upgraded will not see the checklist sorts, and in upgraded accounts the sort will ignore un-upgraded projects.
Several other improvements were included in this release.
For Week 11 of Customer Appreciation Summer we’ve added the ability to filter based on when a value is not set. This makes certain actions much easier, such as finding all unassigned issues. Combined with our batch editing tools it’s now trivial to quickly audit and correct data gaps.
This ability (what we internally call the “none” filter) is only available when it makes sense. For example, issues always have a status and therefore don’t have a “No Status” filter. Filters that include a “none” option include assignment, discipline, priority, equipment type, system, checklist type, review type, review remark, and field observation type.
The “none” filters can be combined just like other filters. For example, you could find all equipment that either has no discipline or has discipline “Mechanical”.
Finally, we’ve also added the “none” option to these same filters in the report generator.
We hope this makes it easier to manage the data in your projects!
For Week 10 of Customer Appreciation Summer we have made two improvements to file navigation: we’ve added next and previous buttons so you can quickly cycle through attached photos and files, and we’ve added Select All and Deselect All buttons for attached photos and files.
The new navigation controls allow you to move to the next or previous file in the list, or jump to any other attached file via a dropdown.
The new Select All/Deselect All buttons make it far easier to batch download files. We’ve also renamed the “Zip” button to “Download” (it still downloads a .zip file, though).
We hope you like these improvements!
For Week 9 of Customer Appreciation Summer we’ve added new report generator options to select specific items for a section, such as specific equipment, checklists, issues, and so forth.
Selecting specific items is an alternative to filters; you can’t combine the two. The interface reflects this with a toggle that allows you to switch between the two options.
For tests we’ve done something special. The list of tests is actually a list of all attempts, allowing you to cherry-pick specific attempts to include. For example, you could select just Attempt No. 2 out of three total attempts. The resulting report would then only show Attempt No. 2 for that test. In addition, only issues, photos, files, and callouts related to Attempt No. 2 (or the overall test) would be included.
With these new options you are able to build reports that just weren’t possible previously. We hope you like it!
Summer is drawing to a close but not without the final releases of our third annual Customer Appreciation Summer! We hit a few bumps here at the end but in the past week we’ve released our final three features: file navigation, new report generator options, and filtering for items where a field is empty.
We’ve got a quick overview of these features below and we’ll have more detailed posts on each of these throughout this week and next.
You now have the option to select a specific set of items to include in the report generator as an alternative to filtering. With tests, you can even select specific test attempts to include.
You can now navigate to the next and previous file in the file viewer, or jump to any other attached file from a dropdown. Plus, we also added Select All/Deselect All buttons to file lists.
Certain filters now allow you to look for items that don’t have a value. For example, you can filter equipment to those that have no discipline set, or filter issues by those that are unassigned. These same filters are available in the report generator as well.
We hope you like these features, and we hope you enjoyed Customer Appreciation Summer! Please keep letting us know what features you would like to see in our feature request forum.
But wait! What about week 12? Well… it needs just a little more time in the oven but we are working on one final Customer Appreciation Summer feature. It’s one a lot of people have asked for. We hope you’ll look forward to it!
Week 8 of our Customer Appreciation Summer adds the company and role of the author to comments, both on the web and in PDFs.
You’ll also see this information in the next release of the iOS app later this week. That update also features the “Include Asset Name” option when creating checklists and tests that we first rolled out on the web last week.
In addition, we’ve improved the presentation of field observation comments in the PDF to make it clearer which comment photos belong to.
As a reminder, all of these features are based on feature requests at feedback.cxalloy.com. Although we focus on smaller features during the Customer Appreciation Summer, we are also working on many of the bigger requests. If you’ve added a request, made a comment, or just voted on the ones you want, thank you – your input there has been incredibly valuable to us.
We hope you like these updates and we’ll see you next week!
Week 7 of our Customer Appreciation Summer is all about checklists and tests. First, we’ve added a new option when creating checklists and tests: “Include Asset Name”. By unchecking this option you can create checklists and tests without their associated asset name, which was not possible before.
We’ve also made two other improvements to the options step – you can now change a name right away without having to click “Customize” first, and we show an example of the name the checklists or tests will be given.
In another improvement to checklists and tests you can now see the percentage of Yes, No, and N/A answers in the PDFs right next to the colored progress bar.
We hope you like these updates. See you next week!
We’ve improved a couple of small navigation bits for week 6 of our Customer Appreciation Summer. Though small these feature requests had a lot of customer votes behind them!
We hope you like these improvements. See you next week!
The latest Customer Appreciation Summer release adds project deletion. You can now finally get rid of that project you renamed “ZZZZ Don’t Use”! 😀
Deleting a project is as simple as clicking the “Delete” button on an account’s Projects page. It’s also available as an option in the “Actions” dropdown on the Overview page and on the General tab of the Project Settings page.
A project must be archived before it can be deleted, and only account admins can delete a project. Like most actions in CxAlloy TQ that modify data, you can undo a project deletion immediately after deleting it. If it takes you a day or two to realize that a project should not have been deleted, you can contact support and we can restore it for you.
Now your project list can look just a little cleaner. We hope you like it. See you next week!
This week we’ve got something really great – a major expansion of the Push Changes feature we rolled out late last year.
Push Changes allows you make edits to a template, such as adding lines or editing questions, and then “push” those changes to the checklists or tests that were created from that template.
With this release you can now also “pull” changes, meaning you can bring a checklist or test up to date with its associated template directly from the checklist or test. You can even select multiple checklists or tests in a list and “pull” changes to all of them.
Even better, we now show information about the associated template directly on the checklist and test page. This makes it easy to know when a checklist or test differs from the template it was created from and also provides a convenient link to that template.
Prior to this release we also expanded push changes to allow pushing from account templates. The sum of these releases is a complete picture for pushing and pulling changes, allowing a checklist or test to be brought up to date with its associated template, regardless of whether it’s a project or account template and whether you are starting from the template or the checklist or test.
We hope you like this feature. See you next week!
One note: pushing and pulling changes are limited to upgraded accounts.
As part of our webinar series Steve Alschuler, principal at Bath Commissioning, gave a fantastic presentation on best practices for managing a profitable and successful commissioning business. If you didn’t catch it, watch it on-demand on our resources page.
A good presentation generates a lot of questions and unfortunately we did not have time to answer all of the questions during the webinar. Steve graciously agreed to answer them after the fact and they are presented here.
Q: How many folks are typically on a Cx team for a project?
Steve: One main project manager/technician does 90% of the work, if there are design reviews our senior Mechanical and Electrical Engineers do the reviews which is a very small part of the project, and then 5% of the project for me as the principal to supervise, review contracts, billings, collections, etc.
Q: Do you have any rules of thumb for commissioning fee estimating for owners? Per square foot? Percentage of construction cost?
Steve: Yes, I tell people for projects from 20,000 sq. ft. to 100,000 sq. ft. Cx should cost between $1/sq. ft. (low boundary) and 1% construction cost (high boundary).
Q: What industries are you seeing the highest need for Cx? Data Centers? Healthcare?
Steve: Higher Ed and Healthcare consistently seem to be our biggest and best proejcts.
Q: How much emphasis do you put on gaining remote access to a projects BAS? If this is something that your firm does regularly, how beneficial is it?
Steve: Not much, we always perform functional testing “on site” with the controls contractor present at the end of construction. There is risk in manipulating the control system by yourself without the BAS contractor present, if something goes wrong you would be responsible.
Q: When it comes to Functional Performance Testing in a retro-commissioning project, do you request the BAS contractor to execute the tests while you observe or do you commandeer the BAS and peform the testing yourselves?
Steve: For us it depends more on which staff we are using and how comfortable they are manipulating the controls. Generally speaking, it is a hybrid where the BAS gives us access and “shows us how to manipulate things” and then we do 80% of the work without them, and maybe 20% of the work with them.
Q: Healthcare requires confidence testing and compliance documentation that every device has been tested. How does commissioning interface with this requirement?
Steve: We test 100% of the systems we commission (generally) which is all documented in our Functional Tests which is provided to our client as an appendix to our final report at the end of the project.
Q: How often do you perform FPT before vs. after building handover? Only re-testing?
Steve: I would guess half the time before and half the time after they take occupancy. I don’t think we ever fully wrap up all testing prior to occupancy, although that would be ideal.
Q: In respect to getting paid for retesting (due to false promises, poor contractor coordination, pencil-whipped checklists, equipment failures, etc.) have you ever worked it into the Cx specs so it is the contractors liability and not the Owner’s? This goes back to your federal example.
Steve: Yes, our specs do say “the responsible contractor will be backcharged for additional testing…”
Q: Are functional tests in CxAlloy generic? Are the functional test extracted from the controls submittal?
Steve: Our functional tests are almost never generic, we write them project-specific based on the “approved” controls submittal.
[Editor’s Note: CxAlloy TQ provides ~15 test templates for common equipment such as AHUs, chillers, boilers, etc. but most customers quickly outgrow those and create or import their own tests.]
Q: As subcontractors, do we have leverage if the Engineer approves a controls submittal, but the approved submittal deviates from the sequence of operation in the spec?
Steve: My opinion is that the last item approved takes precedence, so if the engineer approves a controls contractor’s submittal, that occurs after the plans and specs are issued for construction and the submittal supersedes the information in the project plans and specs, and that is how I believe it should be.
Q: You said it’s unnecessary for the commissioning professional to be present at startup. My experience in NYC is that attending them can be beneficial for different reasons: 1. Expose young engineers to what is done in the field and how it is supposed to be done. 2. Make sure that installers are not cutting corners. Some teams might falsify the results of the pressure testing or evacuation testing for VRF systems – if a CxA is present during the procedure, I think it can add to the quality assurance process that Cx is.
Steve: I agree, it can be beneficial, and we often have staff attend, but it is not a “requirement” of the CxA to be there.
Q: Many times the startup day is the only time that a startup technician will be on site. After that it becomes very challenging to get them back on site. Sometimes the CxA is able to run some functional tests but there are other tests that the manufacturer’s rep is best prepared for it and the tests are crucial to confirm the proper operation of a system. How do you handle that if you aren’t present for startup?
Steve: Yep, that’s why it is important to get good commissioning specs included in the project REQUIRING the Start-Up technician to be available whenever you need him. If he is only on site one day, you are going to waste a lot of time sitting around while he fixes things. He needs to spend a day getting it working, and the COME BACK to demonstrate that it is working.
Q: If the Engineer does not address the Cx concern should that item be marked as a closed item?
Steve: No, make the engineer address it by telling the owner not to pay him or her until it is at least acknowledged. The engineer does not have to take the Cx Provider recommendations, but we require that they at least “acknowledge” the comments we provide.
Q: The question of contractors never seeing any design issues came up. In my experience another reason is the designers never want the dirty laundry shown.
Steve: CxAlloy separated the design “dirty laundry” from the construction “dirty laundry” so the contractors do not know the dialog that has taken place among the owner/Cx Provider/Design Team.
[Editor’s Note: CxAlloy TQ projects have two separate issue logs, Design and Construction. Viewing permissions can be set on each independently and often contractors are not given view access to the design issues log.]
Q: What are your biggest heartaches dealing with the GC/EC/MC?
Steve:
• Number 1, Getting Checklists Completed.
• Number 2, Getting Checklists Completed.
• Number 3, Getting Checklists Completed
Q: Do you use static verification forms to verify the peformance data of each piece of equipment (make, model, serial#, capacity, etc.)?
Steve: This information is gathered by the contractor as part of our construction checklist.
[Editor’s Note: CxAlloy TQ provides a lot of functionality targeted at exactly this, including the ability to scan equipment labels for serial number, model number, etc.]
Q: Do you have checklists that you follow for O&M reviews, TAB reviews, etc. in CxAlloy?
Steve: No we do not, probably should though – good idea.
Q: Does your Cx Final Report typically contain a Systems Manual?
Steve: They used to be separate documents for the longest time, but recently we converged them into a single document. We always do a final report, we don’t always do a Systems Manual, depends if it was listed in the original scope of work for Cx.
Q: We use this software for commissioning, as well as for annual inspections. Is this common practice?
Steve: Yes, we do too.
Q: Please address your experience of CxAlloy for owners use. Is CxAlloy used for retro-commissioning?
Steve: CxAlloy has a monthly cost and I think that might not be ideal for most owners unless they are large and well-funded. We use CxAlloy for both commissioning and retro-commissioning projects but it is designed and optimized for new construction commissioning more than retro.
Q: The project you showed had 4,711 questions for the contractors on the pre-functional checklist! How big was the project?
Steve: It was an elementary school, approximately 60,000 square feet.
[Editor’s Note: The 4,711 questions was the total number of questions across all checklists.]
Q: How can we get help with those CxAlloy customizations?
Steve: I can provide independent consulting services to help set you up with CxAlloy in a way that mimics our process.
Contact Info:
Steve Alschuler PE CCP
Principal
salschuler@bathgroup.com
CO: 8506 Rogers Loop Arvada, CO 80007
NM: 5345 Wyoming Blvd NE Suite 201 Albuquerque, NM 87109
TX: 4110 Rio Bravo Suite 102 El Paso, Texas 79902
(303) 955-5616 or (505) 362-9311 or (915) 313-7200
www.bathgroup.com
[Editor’s Note: For technical help on how to customize project settings you can watch our training videos, visit our support documentation, or email support@cxalloy.com]