The project is an A/E office with very open floor plans, and the question is about defining 'regularly occupied space'. Much of the floor area is open space used for traffic flow to/from employee's desks (workstations). There are also bookshelves for reference materials in some of these spaces. Essentially, these questionable spaces are "corridors", but they are not enclosed by walls, so I am not sure whether or not they count as 'regularly occupied spaces'.
These 'open corridors' are 6' - 8' wide and up to 50' long. Some of them do not have views due to the positioning of workstation shelving units, but almost all of the workstations are awash in views. Should I count these 'open corridors' as "regularly occupied spaces"?
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Jill Dalglish, PE
Lighting EngineerMKK Consulting Engineers
LEEDuser Expert
440 thumbs up
September 21, 2012 - 12:45 pm
From my understanding, the areas or transition spaces between workstations are regularly occupied spaces (ROS), but the areas around them are not. For example, if your have 3 rows and 3 columns of workstations "islands", you would draw a box around the the workstations using the corners of the workstations as the bounding edges. In this example, you would have 2 rows and 2 columns of transition space between the workstations that are included in the ROS. But, the space around the workstations would be corridors. I may have a reference to this in a LEED CIR or other document. I'll look for it and post it if I find it.
Chris Miller
Chief Mechanical EngineerDesign Alaska
36 thumbs up
September 21, 2012 - 8:35 pm
Thank you for your comments, Jill. In my case, the workspaces are U-shaped desk units placed against the exterior walls. Each unit is 'back-to-back', so there is continuous "regularly occupied space" along the perimeter. But the center of the room is an 8'-wide open space that serves as circulation to/from the workspaces. Do you think this area would be 'transition space' or 'corridor'?
Also, in some parts of the room, there are workspaces on one exterior wall and a storage area on the opposite exterior wall, with the 8'-wide open space connecting them. Would this area be considered 'corridor'?
Thank you, Jill.
Jessica Hawley
Sustainability Consultant62 thumbs up
April 22, 2015 - 9:50 am
I am working on an office building where many tenants have open concept floor plans with areas of "cube" workstation spaces but then also many other "collaborative" work areas scattered throughout the floor called "huddle" areas (they are open with just a couch and chairs and small table, not an official "conference/meeting" room or workstation set up. I have classified these as "other" and listed as regularly occupied multi-occupant spaces, even though I would say that they are not really "regularly occupied" for the majority of the day. Is this the best approach to still count them as a regularly occupied space? Similarly, the floor plan has various areas of "hotelling" workstations for visitors that don't have a permanent workstation in the "cube" areas. Again, I included them as a "Open: office" even though they are not technically "regularly occupied" b/c they are only occupied as needed when someone is visiting from another location. Do you agree with these classifications? Thoughts?