Right-sizing

Huge pain point for me, Kim.  We have a LEED Platinum building in South Florida. Our MEP engineers designed it and my team did the LEED energy modeling and LEED Administration. During design, I (and my team) worked with our MEP engineers to help with load calcs and show them that the traditional ROT's are no longer applicable. Even with current feedback from the owner on the optimized efficiency and no issues with thermal comfort, our engineers are still worried that they have undersized the building HVAC systems because it's not in the "normal range of SF/ton or CFM/ton".  

Finally had a moment to read through the artile you linked, Kim. I'm not sure if it's good or bad (probably the latter) that the recommendations discussed are still totally relevant 10.5 years later.  What do we think are the major hurdles still preventing right-sizing? Lack of code enforcement? Lack of understanding? The perception of security that comes with safety factors? Fear of the post-occupancy callback?  There are certainly a lot of other concerns from not right-sizing (added cost, energy consumption, added time for design, dehumidification performance, equipment cycling), but those still seem to be second-tier for some reason. Does it just stem from lack of understanding as Roger says here...? 

"Until there is a greater understanding of the intent of right-sizing, many designers will be hesitant to eliminate safety factors. Owners need to be engaged throughout the design process proactively. Engineers and architects need to communicate their design intent clearly. HVAC engineering is likely the most challenging of all building engineering disciplines, because of the pressure to right-size and the thousands of inputs that are required to size a system. Many of these inputs are nonprescriptive. The reality is that many projects are still provided with significantly oversized systems because the amount of analysis required to right-size with comfort doesn’t align with design fees."

Educational opportunity?