I received some technical advice on my project regarding the occupancy. I have a mixed-use building. Primarily office spaces with a tenant fit out cafe and restaurant. I figured out the hard part of this and used CS standards to determine the expected transient for those spaces. However, I assumed no transient visitors to the offices spaces, as per the guidelines in CS, and therein lines the problem.
"Transient occupants in addition to retail customers have not been included in the form. Based on the primary use of the project, transient visitors to the project space would be common," as said by the reviewer. I'm not sure that I agree, I've always understand that offices spaces do not need to account for transients like other spaces. Am I incorrect?
My only logical explanation is that there's a space labeled as classroom that's a part of the general office space, but that's intended for the already accounted for FTE. Anyone have a similar problem?
Kristina Bach
VP of InnovationSustainable Investment Group
151 thumbs up
October 8, 2014 - 5:48 pm
Offices are required to include transient occupants in their calculations. There just isn't a set default for the number of transients as that can vary greatly based on the nature of the office. For example, a testing/service center, such as a DMV office or a Prometric testing site, would have a very large number of transient visitors each day. A design/consulting office would have fewer transients (generally client meetings, rep presentations, etc.). And a data-entry or call-center office would have almost no visitors each day. As those rates can vary so greatly, LEED has not come up with a default number per SF, but you are required to include office transients in any calculations where applicable.
So you will need to come up with an estimated transient occupancy for your office space to include in your calculations. This should be based on what you think is reasonable given the size, scope, and potential occupants of the space. This may be something that the owner could provide based on operations of some of their other buildings?
Deborah Lucking
Director of SustainabilityFentress Architects
LEEDuser Expert
258 thumbs up
October 8, 2014 - 6:53 pm
Nate,
Almost all offices will have some visitors - vendor representatives, mail and packages delivery, repair and maintenance etc. The number for average and peak can be pretty low. You just have to account for them.