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Forum Categories BOMA 1996 - Office Buildings Question

Single Storey, Multi-Tenant, Restricted Access Building - FCA or BCA?

Lisa N: Innovation Place; October 26, 2011

Hi there,

I'm currently working to complete the BOMA calculations on a single storey, multi-tenant Greenhouse and Lab building that has restricted access to tenants only. This building includes corridors, a header house, washrooms, a meeting room, a lunch room, a storage room (in which the tenants can rent shelving within) and many other rooms available for use by all of the tenants of the building.

I'm needing a little clarification when it comes to allocating some of these common spaces due to the single storey nature of the building. Are they BCA's or are they FCA's?

On the same topic, what would I do with, for example, a Mechanical Room? The 1996 Standard seems to put it into both categories based on it servicing the floor (which makes it a FCA), but in this case, the floor is the entire building (which would make it BCA, which I think is the correct way to analyze it in this case).

Thank you in advance,
Lisa

Adam Fingret: Extreme Measures Inc.; October 26, 2011

Hi Lisa,

BOMA 1996 does not specifically address single-story buildings, however, you are safe to use either FCA exclusively, BCA exclusively, or a combination of FCA and BCA.

Either way, your tenants will be allocated 100% of these resources. You should be aware that there are minor differences between the way FCA and BCA are outlined i.e. FCA takes corridor walls, whereas BCA splits walls with adjoining tenants. This could result in minor calculation differences.

We would likely use BCA exclusively (for simplicity sake), or a combo of FCA (for circulation corridors) and BCA (for everything else).

Sorry there's no straight answer here. I hope this helps.