Third Party AV9000 Commissioning – The Obvious and the Not-So-Obvious Rationale
on Monday, 17 April 2017.
Guest post written by Mario Maltese. Reposted with permission from AQAV at aqav.org.
What is “Third Party Commissioning?”
In legal terms, the word “party” refers to a person taking part in a transaction or contract. An AV Company engaging in a contract with an AV Buyer forms two parties in the contract. When the AV Company completes a battery of tests themselves (using the AV 9000 Commissioning Checklist) intending to certify what they just installed as being compliant with that contract, we call that “First Party” commissioning. It is similar to an internal audit. Personnel specifically trained in the tests, with the required instrumentation, should perform the tests and that personnel should not be the same personnel who installed the system.
When the AV Buyer uses its own trained and equipped personnel to perform the AV9000 Commissioning tests that is called “Second Party” commissioning. Many organizations that have the specialized personnel and instrumentation resources to do this have done so.
When the AV Buyer brings in a disinterested party, one not part of the Project Team who designed or installed the AV system, one who simply applies the AV9000 Standard to gather the evidence of compliance (or non-compliance), that is called “Third Party” commissioning.
Third Party AV9000 commissioning is by far the best practice for today’s complex audiovisual technology for catching all the defects in an economic fashion and improving the vendor pool. Remember that each system is a one-of-a-kind application of technology from the perspective of a design or the environment itself, with many variables. Experience has shown it is best for both the AV Company, who will be paid faster when the system is certified by an outside party and for the AV Buyer as well, who saves in man-hours of staff time and putting the room to good use in the fastest time possible. More on this later…
The Obvious – The obvious reasons come quickly to mind: whenever you are doing something that is important, and complex, and you want to make sure there are no defects that would hurt your reputation, you have someone check your work. It’s the same reason why you have someone proofread something...