Open-office workstations thermal comfort control

We face the same problem with you. I am wonder if we could put the Open office as "Shared multioccupant spaces" and provide GROUP thermal comfort control (i.e. 1 thermostat for 12 people). What we need to do is highlight each multioccupant zone and individual zone in the layout plan, provide the quantity of control equipment (i.e. total 20 thermostat in multioccupant zone, means cover 240 ppl).  I think this approach should be acceptable. Otherwise, it will be crazy if we need to provide 240 individual thermostats for 240 ppl in open office.  

Examples of eligible thermal comfort controls include thermostats, ceiling fans, adjustable underfloor diffusers, task-mounted controls (such as plug-in desktop fans, humidifiers, or dehumidifiers), and operable windows

Thanks David, could you please also advise if we could treat the Office (Open Plan) as “multioccupant space” with several thermal zone divided, rather than “individual occupant space”? Each occupant is able to control the air temperature/fan speed in their zone (not individual workstation), is it acceptable in LEED v4, CI? 

Multi occupant space  100% so need 12 point

open office spaces are multi-occupant spaces that include individual occupant spaces. per the credit language you will need to provide control for at least 50% of the individual occupant spaces. Control must allow the occupant to adjust at least one of the following within their local environment: air temperature, radiant temperature, air speed, or humidity. We have been successful on past projects that include open office space with the following strategy: Open office is served by variable air volume box, 50% of individual work stations are provided with a plug-in desk fan. Good Luck!  

Thanks David, your opinion is very useful! Viewing this, if the office served by FCUs and has 1,000 individual work stations, we need to purchase at least 500 plug-in desk fans for 500 workstations. Do we need to provide photos or purchase order of these plug-in desk fans? Or can we just say we have USB or other plug-in devices provisions for these fans, is it enough to demonstrate the compliance? Thanks!   

This is a design phase credit, so a purchase order should not be required. I'd recommend uploading a cutsheet of the task lamp to LEED Online - be sure to select a task lamp with on-off-midlevel control. Note on the floor plan (preferably a furniture plan) where the lamps will be located. Since these are office workstations I would assume each location already has an outlet for the computer, but perhaps note this on the credit template.

oops! got my credits confused....I meant to list "desk fan" rather than "task lamp". My apologies!

LEED Reviewers treat open work areas as individual work areas, but each desk in that area is considered an individual area, not the room as a whole. So, if you have on open office with 10 desks, there are 10 individual work areas, or workstations. You would need to provide "individual" controls for at least 5 of those. The point is for occupant comfort. If one person is generally always too hot, and one person on the other room is generally always too cold, it is thermally more comfortable for these folks to be able to control their own environment than to be subject to folks turning the group thermostat up and down for everyone.  This is often achieved with underfloor air systems with personalized grills in the floor, desk fans, proximity to operable windows, etc.