Emotional Commissioning: Reading the Room as Well as the Drawings

In Fall 2025, I wrote an article for the Building Commissioning Association (BCxA) titled “Emotional Commissioning: Reading the Room as Well as the Drawings.” The piece explores how success in commissioning depends as much on emotional intelligence as on technical expertise.

I reflect on how unspoken tensions, body language, and differing definitions of “success” can derail a project just as easily as a missed detail in the drawings. The article encourages professionals to approach commissioning as both a technical and human process, ne that requires as much awareness of people as of performance.