I have a highrise office building that will be mixed use office & retail. None of the spaces are yet leased, but the owner does anticipate that the building will need full time maintenance staff and has included shower and restroom facilities, exclusively for their use, on one of the basement levels. Since we don't know the actual occupancy, we are using Appendix 1 Table 1 default values for the types of spaces, to determine FTE.
Does LEED assumed that these default values will take into account building support staff?
How would you handle water calcs for the showers and restrooms, that will be exclusively used by the support staff, without knowing how many support staff there will be? My feeling is for toilets, urinals, and lav faucets, it will be a wash (excuse the pun), since support staff will also have access to all restrooms throughout the building, but how do you address exclusive use showers?
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Nadia Bini
Sustainability CoordinatorMSDL Architectes
3 thumbs up
October 6, 2016 - 1:37 pm
I would recommend using maximum maintenance staff as per intended usage even if no leased are yet signed. That you can use logic to extract and a narrative to support.
Debra a. Lombard
Construction Administrator/ LEED APBywater Woodworks, Inc.
46 thumbs up
March 28, 2017 - 5:42 pm
doesn't the local building code have by space type # occupants per SF (max) and can by layout of walls, can't one assume small private offices will have at least 1 person? etc.
David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1976 thumbs up
March 29, 2017 - 12:41 pm
Code occupancy is often higher than what makes sense to use for calculating FTEs, so use with caution.
Code occupant densities are largely driven by fire and life safety to calculate the maximum number of people who may be in a space and will need to evacuate the building in case of fire. These counts inform decisions about the number and placement of exit stairways, width of stairways and exit corridors, number and width of exit doors, etc...