We are working on a police facility under LEED V4. Currently the department is 12% female. Nationally, police departments, according to a study we will cite, are 14% female. We are installing lockers 30% in the female locker room and 70% in the male locker room, in anticipation of a possible increase in female officers. This has been agreed upon in early meetings with the Police Chief and staff.
We are proposing to model the FTEs for LEED purposes as 30% female and 70% male.
Will this ratio fly with a reviewer?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
January 7, 2018 - 1:43 pm
Lawrence, LEEDuser has an FAQ on non-standard gender ratios here. In short, they are very inflexible and I'm not aware of any development in that attitude over the last year or two. I would contact GBCI for feedback if it's an important issue for the project.
Lawrence Lile
Chief EngineerLile Engineering, LLC
76 thumbs up
January 7, 2018 - 2:57 pm
Thanks, Tristan. We recently successfully argued that a landfill office, that employs 50 garbage truck drivers, only one of which is female at the current time, could have a nonstandard male-female ratio. However, that was a LEED 2009 project and perhaps they have tightened up under V4? There is nothing that conserves water like a pint urinal and a lot of guys! (well, almost nothing. Waterless urinals give me the hives.) We'll try to argue this before we submit and I'll get back to you if we have any luck. I'll set it up so we don't flunk the prerequisite in any case!
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
January 7, 2018 - 3:02 pm
Lawrence, congrats—that is one of the only cases I've heard of successful lobbying for a nonstandard gender ratio. Maybe you're onto something!
I'm not aware that this has tightened up under LEED v4. I think you should make the case for it given your experience.