Lactation room

This topic has come up before, in fact awhile ago. I believe the final agreement was that it should. Since there is no office of this type listed in the regularly occupied space matrix there is no definitive answer. However, since exam rooms are considered regularly occupied and must be included, so would a space with this type of activity. You would think privacy for an exam room, especially even more privacy then a nursing room. Here is the other thing, I would say that privacy would be more of an issue from the interior. You would want mothers to have views to the exterior while they nurse.

We have successfully excluded the lactation room on a number of recent projects. All of the nursing moms (current or in the past) that we surveyed did not want a window with a view in the lactation room. Also, all of the mother stated they did not think they would ever use the room for an hour or more at a time.

Heather, is that the narrative you used for the argument for the exclusion of the space?

I can see the time limit as a valid. In discussion with the mother's in the office, that is about all you will be in there.

Hi Todd, yes the determining factor was really that we considered the space not regularly occupied, so it was excluded from all the credits where the spaces only have to be regularly occupied. We weren't asked about its exclusion, so we did not have to provide a narrative. So maybe we just got lucky that we weren't asked about it?

The AIA's Best Practices guideline for Lactation Room Design indicates 15 to 30 minutes as the typical usage period: http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/secure/documents/pdf/aiap037226.pdf.