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This winter has reminded me on how mild the previous three winters have been. As commissioning consultants, the cold weather has been advantageous to us as we are actually experiencing design winter degree days and on certain northern projects, exceeding the design winter degree days! Hitting the actual winter design degree day affords us the opportunity to performance test HVAC systems at their peak design and to pinpoint areas and systems that are either undersized or other extraneous circumstances that impact performance.
Thinking back to my facilities management days, not only was I concerned about HVAC performance and maintaining occupant comfort during extreme and prolonged cold snaps, but was also very concerned for when the weather warmed up as that is when you would find out what pipes have frozen during a cold snap as they would thaw and subsequently leak. I was therefore never nervous during cold temperatures, only when the weather would improve and warm up!
From a commissioning perspective and from a building management perspective, extreme cold has tremendous advantages in fine tuning or identifying possible performance and operational issues. My advice would always be to take the time and approach these cold temperatures as an opportunity to truly put your HVAC and building systems to the test.