We are working on a tenant fit-out for a specialty group occupying the entire 3rd floor and part of the 1st floor in a LEED-certified building. The office is designed for 110 employees, with most staff on the 3rd floor utilizing the toilets in the base building's core. Our design includes a private restroom for the CEO adjacent to their office, as well as two single restrooms on the 1st floor intended for a few specialty offices. These two restrooms are expected to serve fewer than 10 occupants, though we have conservatively assumed 35% usage.
The preliminary review raised a comment that the percentage of occupant usage for each fixture family in the prerequisite calculation must total 100%, but this calculation is limited to tenant fixtures. In our case, this approach doesn't seem to align with actual usage, as the biggest portion of our occupants will use the base building's fixtures, so assuming that 100% of our occupants will use our installed fixtures would not make sense. It would be more logical for the occupant usage to total 100% in the credit calculator, which accounts for both tenant and base building fixtures, rather than the prerequisite, which only includes tenant fixtures.
Does this justification make sense in our situation? We are considering submitting a narrative to explain why achieving 100% occupant usage for our tenant fixtures alone would not be accurate.
emily reese moody
Sustainability Director, Certifications & ComplianceJacobs
LEEDuser Expert
486 thumbs up
February 13, 2025 - 10:18 pm
Apologies - I had this all typed out and entered 2 weeks ago, but it apparently disappeared when my computer crashed while posting.
I believe you likely would have been fine if your explanation had been provided alongside the initial submission for the Prerequisite. I agree with your approach and that the Credit documentation would supplement and add up to 100% with the addition of the core fixtures. In future projects (or for other Prereqs or Credits), it's always a good idea to explain things if it strays from a typical approach.
One note: I've gotten review comments in the past that restrooms serving only a CEO or similar office are still considered public, not private (even if only 1-2 people are intended to use it), so make sure they're labeled correctly with the dropdown in the calculator.