Where this protocol fits
You are opening a new restaurant, a new food-hall stall, or a new ghost-kitchen build-out. You have a general contractor, a hood manufacturer, a licensed mechanical installer, and an architect — possibly four other people too — and the question is who is going to read the kitchen-ventilation portion of the plans line by line and make sure the system as built matches what the city's ME-3 mechanical inspector wants. That is what this protocol is for.
What we do
We come in at the shop-drawing stage. We read the kitchen ventilation plan, the makeup-air calculation worksheet, the duct routing, the suppression-system layout, and the gas-shutoff interlock plan. We flag conflicts. We sit through the installation week and verify the duct run, the access-panel placement, the suppression-nozzle orientation, the makeup-air ducting, and the rooftop fan setup. We hand the GC a punch list before the city walks the site. We attend the ME-3 inspection and, where useful, walk the inspector through what they are looking at.
What we cost
A typical single-hood new build is $1,800–$2,800 for the full commissioning package. Multi-hood builds — common in food halls — are quoted per project. We do not charge for the initial drawing review on a project we are confident about; we use it to decide whether we are the right shop for the job.
What we won't do
We will not stand between the GC and the city. The general contractor is the responsible party for the inspection. We are an advisor, not a stamping engineer. We will not sign off on a system we did not commission ourselves. We will not commission a system whose hood OEM is not UL-listed for kitchen ventilation duty.
How we got into this work
Three of our four crew came up through the cleaning side of commercial kitchen exhaust, where you spend years walking systems that were installed wrong. After enough of those, you start asking whether you can prevent the problems by being on site at the install. Most field-cleaning shops do not offer commissioning. We offer it because we have spent so much of our cleaning work undoing other people's installation mistakes.
Recent commissions
The Westchase ghost-kitchen hall, six tenant hoods over two roof fans, opened January 2026 — see the field record. Big Sun BBQ in Spring Branch, recommissioned after eighteen months closed — see that record. A small two-hood build for a Vietnamese restaurant in Bellaire, opened October 2025 (no public record at operator request).