Our project is a small building located inside a factory site plan. We are not building more changing rooms and bike storage area, because the factory already have those facilities available for employees.
USGBC is asking us to provide a narrative to confirm that all LEED-NC project FTE occupants will have full access to changing facilities. How should we describe that? Any thoughts?
Also they are asking us to ensure that the provided changing facility have been based on a balanced, one-to-one gender ratio. Well, since it´s an older factory plant, this 1:1 gender was not an issue at the time. So there is not the same number of showers available in the changing rooms.
The factory has 74% of employees male, and 26% females. If we consider the number of showers available, acording to the proportion of man/woman working there, we will get the 1:1 ratio. Is it acceptable?
David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1980 thumbs up
September 21, 2012 - 1:34 pm
If your project is sharing bike racks and showers with other buildings, you'll need to show that you can meet the 5% of peak occupants and 0.5% of FTE staff for all those buildings combined. Yes, a narrative with the alternative compliance path option would be a good way to do this, since you don't want to change your FTE numbers in the PI forms.
When we calculate those FTE and peak users numbers we have to assume a 50/50 split between men and women. We can change that ratio only in special circumstances (such as a single-sex residential dorm) but they won't usually let us change that just because there has historically been more of one gender using the facility.
So, for an FTE of 1000 with one showering/ changing facility for each gender, assume 500 men, 500 women.
500 x 0.005 = 2.5, round it up to 3, and we'd need 3 showers for men and 3 for women.
Another option might be to have some or all of the showers each be a private unisex room, similar to a single handicapped restroom. If those are separate from other bathroms, you'd want to make them clearly marked and easy to find.
1000 FTE x 0.005 = 5, so 5 private shower & changing rooms that can used by either men or women at any time. Does that make sense?
Michelle Robinson Schwarting
148 thumbs up
September 21, 2012 - 2:45 pm
Regarding the Gender Ratio, the WEp1 Additional Guidance document addresses it somewhat (http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=6493).
Per the document, "Modifications to the 50:50 ratio must be shown to apply for the life of the building."
"Acceptable special circumstances include:
"1. Projects specifically designed for an alternative gender ratio. Examples of this could be a single gender educational facility or any project that can show that flush and flow fixtures have been distributed to account for the modified ratio. Project teams must provide documentation of the code-required plumbing fixture counts per gender, so the review team can verify that the flush-fixture ratio installed in the project supports the alternative gender ratio claimed.
"2. Projects expected to have alternative gender usage rates for the life of the building. An example of this could be a military project. For such projects current staffing level or human resource data, alone, is not sufficient to justify a departure from the 50:50 ratio. Supporting documentation must include trend data forecasting forward that shows the unequal gender ratio will likely exist for the life of the building."
We came across this situation for a military building, where the owner was claiming similar ratios to what youv'e got in your factory. But because of architectural layout of the building, they ended up having almost as many facilities for women as they had for men (per code), so we could not argue much for Circumstance #1. Circumstance #2 might have been an option, but we felt like it would take too long to track down that form of information (trend forecasting, etc.). In the end we simply went back to 50/50 ratio for our LEED application because we had enough showers to cover that many women as well.
If yours is a factory plant that already has showers that do not meet the amount current code would require for an equal 50/50 gender ratio, then you may be able to make the case for Circumstance #1.