OLD GUARDCommissioning is the proof between installation and production. It should show that the room, equipment, materials, records, and crew function as one system under the actual operating envelope. Vendor startup is one input—not the entire commissioning process.
Scope boundary: This checklist does not replace the equipment manufacturer's instructions, engineered drawings, fire and building officials, electrical classification, industrial-hygiene work, or jurisdiction-specific cannabis rules.
Freeze the design basis
- Define extraction method, solvent or processing media, material condition, batch size, product mix, and target throughput.
- Record the approved operating envelope: temperature, pressure, flow, recovery, occupancy, and environmental assumptions.
- Confirm the room, utility, storage, waste, and material-flow design against the selected equipment—not a generic model.
- Resolve responsibility boundaries among owner, designer, contractor, equipment vendor, safety professionals, and operations.
- Control late changes through a written review of safety, quality, schedule, training, and documentation impacts.
Verify facility and safety systems
- Close required building, fire, electrical, occupancy, cannabis, and equipment approvals.
- Verify electrical service, grounding and bonding, compressed gases, water, drainage, vacuum, heating, cooling, and ventilation under load.
- Confirm documented hazardous-location classification and suitable electrical equipment where flammable vapor, gas, liquid, or combustible dust hazards may be present.
- Test gas detection, alarms, interlocks, emergency power behavior, ventilation failure response, and emergency shutdowns.
- Confirm chemical labeling, safety data sheets, storage, spill response, PPE, lockout needs, egress, and emergency communication.
- Record baseline environmental and utility measurements for later troubleshooting.
Accept the extraction and support equipment
- Verify model, serial number, approved configuration, installation, access, guarding, labels, and utility connections.
- Complete factory and site acceptance tests, then close or formally disposition every punch-list item.
- Challenge controls, sensors, recipes, permissives, alarms, relief paths, and shutdown sequences within the authorized test plan.
- Document calibration status and reference standards for critical instruments.
- Confirm cleaning and inspection access, compatible cleaning agents, change parts, tools, consumables, and spare parts.
- Collect current manuals, drawings, certificates, warranties, service contacts, and software or controller backups.
Qualify people, procedures, and records
- Approve usable SOPs for receiving, setup, startup, normal operation, shutdown, cleaning, inspection, maintenance, sampling, waste, and emergencies.
- Issue controlled batch records, cleaning records, logbooks, deviation forms, maintenance records, and reconciliation forms.
- Train each role, then verify competency through observed execution and fault-response scenarios.
- Define who may release equipment, approve a batch, stop work, change a setting, clear an alarm, or restart after a deviation.
- Confirm shift handoff, escalation, vendor-support, and after-hours response paths.
Run integrated trials
- Dry run: execute the full sequence without process material and record every missing tool, instruction, or decision.
- Utility run: hold the expected operating load long enough to expose capacity, stability, condensation, ventilation, or alarm problems.
- Controlled material trial: use an approved test plan with defined limits, sampling, yield accounting, and stop criteria.
- Traceability challenge: reconcile source material, work in process, samples, waste, recovered media, and finished output.
- Cleaning challenge: execute, inspect, document, and release the equipment using the actual procedure.
- Deviation challenge: create a controlled exception and verify containment, documentation, investigation, and restart authority.
- Emergency drill: demonstrate shutdown, evacuation, communication, accountability, and post-event control with the appropriate professionals.
Control the handoff to operations
- Define release criteria and obtain documented acceptance from the accountable functions.
- Transfer the final equipment file, approved settings, baseline trends, records, open items, and risk acceptances.
- Schedule preventive maintenance, calibration, inspection, filter, sensor, seal, and safety-system tasks.
- Set early-life monitoring for yield, recovery, cycle time, alarms, downtime, cleaning, deviations, and operator observations.
- Hold a post-start review after enough real runs to distinguish startup noise from recurring system problems.
Use the checklist as a gate, not a filing exercise
Each item should have an owner, due date, status, evidence link, dependency, and release impact. A checked box without evidence is an assumption; an open critical item without a decision owner is a launch blocker.
For the broader building, licensing, staffing, and quality review, use the cannabis facility readiness assessment. For equipment selection upstream of commissioning, see how to choose a cannabis extraction system.
Primary references
- CDC/NIOSH: Cannabis workplace safety and health hazards
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.307: Hazardous (classified) locations
- OSHA 29 CFR 1910.106: Flammable liquids
- ASHRAE: Commissioning process resources and standards overview
Applicability depends on the process and jurisdiction. Confirm requirements with the authority having jurisdiction and qualified safety, engineering, and legal professionals.