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LEED FTE calculations, programmatic forecasting.

pDESIGN

Hey kids.

The firm that I'm working for right now has a number of projects undergoing LEED certification. These reflect the trend toward mixed use, eco-friendly work... grey water harvesting, runoff collection, blackwater treatment, etc. Good stuff.

Issues:
The bottom level is being built out as a shell - we don't control who will lease these spaces, what their individual SF will be, etc.... or even their use (open to R,B,M,A). Yet occupancy calculations figure significantly into LEED calcs. I'm aware of (and have used) a number of "unknown occupancy" calculations for shell buildings under LEED, but these make no provision for "Transient" (visiting) users. Does anyone know of a resource that says something to the effect of:

Retail = xx users/SF, xx visitors/SF
Cafe = xx users/SF, xx visitors/SF

Or something overly generic like that. I've been looking for credible research to this effect but have found very little. If you've hit this wall, I'd love to know how you got over (or through) it.

Anyways, drop a note if you have something.
Best,
pD

 
Jul 26, 07 2:34 pm
eastcoastarch03

hi dad

Jul 26, 07 2:36 pm  · 
 · 
pDESIGN

hi son.

Jul 26, 07 3:53 pm  · 
 · 
vado retro

even if you are doing a shell, don't you need occupancy classifications for permitting?

Jul 26, 07 3:56 pm  · 
 · 
vado retro

not to mention fire separation, egress etc?

Jul 26, 07 3:57 pm  · 
 · 
pDESIGN

To a certain degree, yes, occupancy classifications are required. The building IS permitted and construction is underway. The fact that occupancy hasn't been fully addressed is taken care of by a 'Mixed Use' designation. Egress, fire separation, etc tied to this that have been met.

The issue here isn't related to permitting but LEED certification of a building relatively flexible in nature. We're putting together a variety of scenarios to predict the most restrictive occupant loads (ie, the entire bottom floor as restaurant/mercantile occupancy) and working our calculations from there.

It would be nice to have some sort of standard to refer to here... I can certainly factor for the maximum allowed by fire code, but that'd be working on the most restrictive case, not one that's realistic.

...probably a bit heavy for a discussion post, so I'll get back to my spreadsheets...

pD

Jul 26, 07 5:30 pm  · 
 · 
treekiller

vado stay out of this, your not green enough ;-)


pD- This scenario calls for using LEED-CS, (core and shell) or LEED for Retail from which I pulled:
FTE: Maximum full-time shift equivalent numbers for both employees and customers can be determined in the following three ways. In all three a 50/50 ration of male to female should be used:
1. Actual or Historical data
2. Projections
3. If there is no actual data or projections, the following chart can be used
[SEE THE LEED LETTER TEMPLATE]

you can also submit the occupancy determined by local code for egress/parking to base your calculations... I seem to recall that visitors/customers don't get calculated as part of the FTE.

if your project is registered, you can submit a CIR:
from 10/18/2004 v2.0 WEc3.1

Since a hospital project has a variable and transient occupancy, the project team has proposed an alternative method for calculating water use reduction based on estimated daily fixture uses rather than estimated occupant usage. The proposed method sets a usage baseline for each fixture type. The base case and design case calculations use this common usage factor to determine water use savings.

While it is preferable for projects to use the prescribed occupant usage factors for calculations under this credit, it may be difficult to obtain a reasonable representation of water usage in projects with high transient occupancies. The proposed method is an acceptable alternative for use by projects of this type to calculate water use savings under this credit.


keep on reading the CIRs, cause I stopped after this case.

Jul 26, 07 5:41 pm  · 
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pDESIGN

...thanks. Our LEED AP hadn't turned me on to the online CIR's, so this helps greatly!

Jul 26, 07 6:56 pm  · 
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vado retro

hey i can do retention calc's better than most.

Jul 26, 07 7:15 pm  · 
 · 
RealLifeLEED

I've written two posts on the subject. Appendix A of the LEED-CS reference guide gives you what you're looking for...

For Commercial
http://reallifeleed.blogspot.com/2008/03/determining-occupancy.html

For Residential
http://reallifeleed.blogspot.com/2008/04/determining-occupancy-residential.html

Good luck,

Joel McKellar, LEED AP
http://reallifeleed.blogspot.com

May 2, 08 11:26 am  · 
 · 
Ammar Yahia

Boss,

56 floors tower, for Corporate banking, after totaling the open planed desks and celluler offices desks we have around 4000 of full time occupants staff.

Iam just trying to calculate the Visitors as a percent from the the full time occupants. Is that correct and if so wat will be the percent. ;/  :D

in addition to that i have some spaces that is functioned differently,

will it count in the part-time occupants calculations.

1 -Meeting rooms

2- A  Whole floor that's restaurant.

3- A whole floor that's Ball room 

4-An Auditorium

The thing is that is my first LEED project practice. Iam really seeking gauidance pro.

Thanks.

 

Kind regards,

Jun 30, 12 10:15 am  · 
 · 

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