Multiple Shift FTEs

Eddie, this credit is focused on overall water use, not peak use, so you would want to count all workers, not just those from the largest shift.

If we count FTE for all shifts, which I agree with, how do we account for bike rack quantities and other FTE driven requirements with a total non-simultaneous occupancy? 100 FTE for each of three shifts would be 300 FTE for the claculation of total water savings but we would not need 5% of 300 bike rack spaces when only 100 people will be in the facility during each of the individual shifts.

Correct, water use is from the total number of people flushing in a day, but bike racks should be based on peak occupancy during the largest shift. The PI Form 3 creates different occupancy numbers for peak and total that account for that and should link different FTE numbers to the different credit forms. See Table PIf3-2 and 3-3 for "Total peak users (FTE + peak transients)" and "Daily average project space users." There's a footnote indicating that the Total peak users can be adjusted for multiple shifts, but you need to explain that in the Special Circumstances.

Thus to answer Eddie's original question you'd count all employees for all shifts in a typical day in the FTE table PIf3-2 but reduce the "Total peak users (FTE + peak transients)" in Table PIf3-3 to reflect the busiest shift.

Incidentally, what can be confusing is how to count Transients (Students/ Visitors). The PI form 3-3 has a field for "Daily average," this should be the total number of transients that enter the facility in a typical day, which should be higher than the Peak number which is the high number of transients at any one time on a typical day, say during the lunch rush.

People often ask if transients should be counted separately or as part of the FTE numbers in Table 3-2 (the LEEDUser glossary says you can count them as either). Either way does work, but I think it's clearer to count transients differently from FTE.

For water usage, what matters is the fixture use assumptions that get assigned to FTEs and Transients. The "Total Daily Usage" number in the Flow and Flush Fixture tables of the WE credit forms is based on different number of daily uses assumed for an FTE person and a Transient person. (For example, a FTE person is expected to flush 3 times a day.) Those assumptions are listed in Table 1 of the "Water Use Reduction Additional Guidance" pdf document at:
http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=6493

Since they assume only one toilet flush for every two transients (0.5 per person), and no shower use, people may have different use patterns with their visitors, say in a gym or clinic. To account for that, the WE forms allow you to change the Total Daily Usage value in the tables, as footnote 2 in those forms indicates. Thus for a gym, you might expect 75% of your transients to shower (I'm just guessing), instead of none, so you'd increase the "Total Daily Uses" for the shower fixture row (you might have to add the row to the table.)

Hope that helps - sorry for the long response.

Thanks so much David. It's nice to have our assumptions confirmed. However My question is related to a few NC and CI projects where we have multiple shifts but EB was the only place I could find reference to a multiple shift FTE query. The NC and CI forms only seem to have a peak adjustment cell for Transients & retail customers and no modifier for a peak staff occupancy that would certainly be lower than a 2 or 3 shift workday that the bike rack credit would calculate from in lieu of the full FTE.

Anthony - This might explain it. I submitted the following to the LEEDOnline Feedback:

Issue:
When I go into LEEDOnline for a CI project for Table PIf3-3 (form version 3.0) I have an editable cell for the value of "Total peak users (FTE + peak transients)*" that I can adjust if there's a lower peak FTE for shift work. There's an asterisk for that row indicating it can be modified for shift work: "*May be modified to account for shift work. If modified, provide a detailed explanation in the Special Circumstances section below."

But when I go into an NC project for the same table (also a form version 3.0) that same field is not editable and there's no asterisk or note. This would appear to be an error as the same situation could apply to an NC project. I'd propose that the same note and ability to edit that cell be added to the NC forms if this is indeed missing from the most current form.

Response:
The new version of the NC form (version 4.0) has a complex occupancy option for non-standard occupancy patterns such as shift work. If you would like to upgrade your form, please let us know via the Feedback Link. For more information on updates to the forms, please see the LEED Online v3 Form Fix Log.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued patience,

LEED Customer Service