We are currently working on a single office project for a corporate client. The project includes a main 4-story building block with offices and support spaces, and a secondary one-story block that houses an auditorium / meeting space with its support spaces (restrooms, small kitchen area, technical projection area, etc). The project is conceived and will function as one single entity, with the secondary building volume serving the main building volume – in fact, the auditorium building does not have FTEs working full-time within it – it will be occupied by those FTEs working in the main building, and occasional visitors.
Because the project is programmatically one, and obviously owned by the same entity, utility companies provide it with a single electricity supply as well as a single water supply, which is used for the entire project. Therefore, beyond functioning as a single project program-wise, it also functions as a single project in terms of electric and water provision, both of which can therefore only be measured as a whole.
We understand the USGBC definition of ‘one building’, but since this project works programmatically (and in terms of electric and water supply) as a single building, and in light of the fact that since the secondary building could not be separately certified (because it does not have full-time employees within it) we would like to request permission to submit our project in a single building application, as is allowed for other uses by LEED Interpretation 10203?