Andrea, LEED would not require you to do that, but you could choose to do so, of course. It could be part of your Comprehensive Transportation Management plan to earn an EP point.

Many Thanks Tristan, that was helpful.

Have you checked to see if you have to most recent/ up-to-date version of the credit form?

Hi Marci and David,
I'm not sure how this one turned out. But I have a CS project that is calculating my showers for 257 FTEs as 1. I get 1.285 and rounded up to 2 as we have always done with all LEED credits.

I sent a Feedback request on this form thinking it should be rounding up and was told the following:
"You are correct. The value 1.285 should be round of 1. We can put 1 shower."

This response is so out of character that I am continuing to tell the Owner 2 showers are needed. The last time I saw a rounding error was on the MR2 form in the subtotal field and it tooks several contacts and months to even get an acknowledgement that it was wrong let alone get it fixed.

Has there been a sea change about rounding up? Is this an issue of CS that's new?

Michelle, I haven't heard about a change in the always-rounding-up policy until reading these examples here. Can you contact your reviewer to confirm, and let us know?

It depends on how far the bike storage room is from where people enter the occupied area of the building. The garage area itself isn’t considered part of the certified LEED project area, so if the bike parking storage is in such a large underground garage that people have to walk more than 200 yards of horizontal travel to reach the entrance of the LEED building or elevators that serve the LEED building, then that storage probably wouldn't count. You can check the sample Core & Shell LEEDOnline credit template to compare the wording with the Comercial Interiors SSc3.2 form you mention.
https://new.usgbc.org/sampleforms/Core%20and%20shell/all/all

Yes, the showers that are off-site but within 200 yards of your project entrance can be outside of your LEED project boundary as long as they are publically accessible.

You don't have to buy memberships for all 1300 occupants.

Since this credit is more concerned with providing showers to your bike riders when needed than full health club access, you might see if you can negotiate an arrangement with the health club for access that can somehow be shared by bike riders who only need to use the shower...

If you calculate 8 showers are needed, maybe your office can negotiate a contract for at least 8, but preferably more "passes" or "punch cards" that can be signed out at the health club desk for a short duration. Requiring a sign in and out with a time might discourage people from taking too long or sneaking in to the spinning class.

There's a discussion from April 2012
https://www.leeduser.com/credit/NC-2009/SSc4.2#comment-24328
where a project was asked to document that there were enough showers in the health club to serve the existing members including the 8 people at a time that your office would need.

Elizabeth, LEED-CS does not specify peak, as other systems do. You are correct to note the discrepancy.

it can be a shared changing area as long as it is a practical solution that will allow for enough room should all three showers be in use at once. one thing to note though, unless you intend on providing unisex shower rooms (which will require three seperate rooms with showers and changing areas), do not forget to divy up the showers based on M/F. Typically with an uneven number requried, you should round up to two per sex assuming a 50%/50% split. you cannot provide all the required showers and chanign rooms for one sex only unless you can show that the building is unisex as well.

I received a response to this question from GBCI:
"Yes, mixed-use buildings with a total gross square footageSum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building including basements, mezzanine and intermediate-floored tiers, and penthouses with headroom height of 7.5 ft or greater. It is measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls or from the centerline of walls separating buildings, but excluding covered walkways, open roofed-over areas, porches and similar spaces, pipe trenches, exterior terraces or steps, chimneys, roof overhangs, and similar features. greater than 300,000 square feet must apply the bicycle storage calculation, on page 55 of the LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Design and Construction (2009 Edition), for each use of the building. Currently, the form is not programmed to take all of this into account. You will have to upload these calculations separately into the credit form."

Just wanted to make sure project teams are aware. Mixed use projects require some additional calculations outside of the LEED template form for SSc4.2.

Hi John,

Regarding your statement above "apply bicycle storage calculation for each use of the building",
if my project is a retail mall that has shops, restaurants, and entertainment areas (movies & arcades), do I have to calculate separately for each, or can I consider that there is only 1 use for the building (which is "Mall")?

Thanks,
Omar

Yes, as you noticed, code occupany - whether for fire, mechanical, electrical, or plumbing design - is often much higher than the actual or default occupany, since those code occupancy numbers are used to size equipment for peak loads or protect life safety in extreme conditions. Thankfully, LEED does not require us to use those code occupancy numbers becasue they don't usually reflect the typical building use. You can use the Default Occupancy numbers from Appendix 1, or if you have other more accurate planning & programing assumptions used for the design you can use those instead.

Yes, in LEED they mean the same thing. In practice, some projects prefer to provide a mix of secure storage rooms inside the building and exterior racks for locking of bikes depending on the needs and security concerns of the users.

Hi guys, I have a question regarding this as well. Do the locks need to be provided or can we just install "something" (a bar or railing) along a wall which can serve for users to lock their bikes with their own locks?

Each bike rider will provide their own locks. You'll want to provide a rack that provides adequate support for the bike and a reasonable way to attach a lock - not all racks are designed for easy use, but LEED doesn't get into that level of detail.

The bike racks are calculated based on peak number of users - see the last paragraph of the Bird's Eye view above.

Robert, the changing facilities are based on FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories., but the bike racks are based on 3% average building occupants. I would interpret this in terms of how many passengers might be moving through the station on an average day (or perhaps a small chunk of time would make sense and could be justified).

You often see lots of bikes and bike racks at train and bus stations. Do you have reason to think that nearly all the commuters at this station will only be switching from trains to buses or vice versa?

First, I was incorrect in my numbers. based on the projections we are designing to, they expect 13,400 daily commuting trips out of the facility. Some of those are folks who are simply using the station as a bus transfer, so I can see them as not counting as occupants or visitors, but they also anticipate that the large majority of the train riders will be utilizing the very good bus system to get from their homes to the station. I agree that this may be an opportunity to change habits, but it is virtually a side walk to side walk project and so adding racks beyond minimum requirements to make a statement is out of the question.

Perhaps the GBCI will not let my assumptions fly, which will only result in us losing the potential point here, but confirmation would be nice before we move on to more practical goals of the project.

Robert, what would you propose as a reasonable way to comply with LEED requirements here? If we call each commuting trip a building user, we're talking 402 bike racks. That's a lot but it's not infinite. Seems like you could do some math on how many of those trips are the same person, and how many "shifts" those trips represent, and bring that number down to something doable.

Robert, I would agree with you on this. The requirement is that the facility is sized for 0.5% of occupants, but the assumption would be that anyone can use it.

It's a bit surprising that there is a CS Option 3. for residential projects, as we've not seen any projects that were predominantly residential pursue Core and Shell. Typically LEED NC is pursued when there is a mixed use buildings with ground floor retail and residential towers above, or a lower commercial podium with residential above. Its common for that commercial space to be built only as core and shell construction, but since the residential units are usually fairly complete - walls, doors, finishes, bathrooms, etc - those usually push the project into NC. I can imagine an exception if the building is predominantly commercial with a small percentage of the building areas as residential. Is that your situation?

For residential units, the FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. is based on the number of bedrooms - typically 1.5 unit people per bedroom.

Projects over 300,000 sf do list the requirement for shower and changing facilities to be within 200 yards of the entrance. As you point out, there's not the explicit requirement for the racks to be within 200 yards for CS Case 2.

Since the main difference in the credit requirements between the cases and project types are in the percentages racks per FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories., and all the others consistently list 200 yards for the maximum rack distance, I can see no good reason why CS Case 2 projects wouldn't also have to meet that requirement. I suspect this is a small omission that's not been picked up in the addenda yet, and if you go through the credit form I believe it will still follow the 200 yard minimum distance requirement between bike storage and building entrance.

For non-residential projects, bike racks don't have to be covered.

Secure means that the bikes would be stored in a relatively safe location (away from obvious hazards), and that they can be locked, either in a room with restricted access, or using individual locks.

I'm not familiar with any specific requirements for this. I would assume that it simply must be reasonably permanent, visible, and readable. I woudl be surprised if LEED required anything specific as far as material, etc.

Cara, does this mean that in case 1 above, we shuld exclude the parking from the calculations? Doing that we would have only 50,000 sqf office area, with a resulting 200 default occupancy.

That is how I would read the response from Cara Mae, yes.

hello

I have a problem about the number of the bicycle storage.
In our project, client give me the data of person number: 6m2/person(retail), I think it is the FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories., if every one stay 2 hour everyday, so the all building users should be 4 times about the FTE, but as the index of 6m2/person, two person can not stay in the same time, that is to say, when one person levave, another person can reach. so I think the bicycle storage should also use the FTE. If use all building users for the bicycle storage, bicycle storage will be given more than the fact several times.

thanks

Is your project larger or smaller than 300,000 ft2? The credit requirements are a ittle different for each case.

The requirements are clear that you must use FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. for showers and changing rooms, but number of building occupants for bicycle storage.

I think you need to double-check your occupancy numbers. Those are very high compared to the default numbers given in the CS Appendix in the LEED Reference Guide. The Reference Guide also distinguishes between employees and transients.

"Projects which contain underground and/or structured parking, may exclude that area from the gross square footageSum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building including basements, mezzanine and intermediate-floored tiers, and penthouses with headroom height of 7.5 ft or greater. It is measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls or from the centerline of walls separating buildings, but excluding covered walkways, open roofed-over areas, porches and similar spaces, pipe trenches, exterior terraces or steps, chimneys, roof overhangs, and similar features. used for the calculation."

Eric, it would be very helpful if you say what is the origin of this quote?
Where to find this information?

I found it: in App 1 to LEED BD+C Ref.guide

Hi Cara, thanks for your response. The use of "Basement" is unclear.

Thinking in two hipothetical cases:

Case 1: Core & Shell Building, 50,000 sqf office area. 50,000 sqf underground parking. If underground parking is considered as "basement", Gross Floor AreaGross floor area (based on ASHRAE definition) is the sum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building, including basements, mezzanine and intermediate‐floored tiers, and penthouses wi th headroom height of 7.5 ft (2.2 meters) or greater. Measurements m ust be taken from the exterior 39 faces of exterior walls OR from the centerline of walls separating buildings, OR (for LEED CI certifying spaces) from the centerline of walls separating spaces. Excludes non‐en closed (or non‐enclosable) roofed‐over areas such as exterior covered walkways, porches, terraces or steps, roof overhangs, and similar features. Excludes air shafts, pipe trenches, and chimneys. Excludes floor area dedicated to the parking and circulation of motor vehicles. ( Note that while excluded features may not be part of the gross floor area, and therefore technically not a part of the LEED project building, they may still be required to be a part of the overall LEED project and subject to MPRs, prerequisites, and credits.) = 100,000 sqf. Default Occupancy = 400.

Case 2: Core & Shell Building, 50,000 sqf office area. 50,000 sqf surface parking, zero underground parking. Surface parking is non-enclosed thus, Gross Floor Area = 50,000 sqf. Default Occupancy = 200.

Obviously, one of the calculations above is wrong. Which one is it? and what is the correct way to understand it?. What uses are included in "basement" according to ASHRAE definition?

Basement parking is not to be included into the GSF and therefore you wouldn't apply any FTEs to it.Be sure to only exclude the parking area. Supporting areas like storage, mechanical rooms ect. have to be included into the GSF. See the note below the certification fee table. http://www.gbci.org/main-nav/building-certification/resources/fees/curre...
Since the GSF entered in the PI forms is what determines the fee, that would also be the basis of your FTE calculation.
If the USGBC reads this, please give us a more defined guideline on the definition of all the different areas in LEED Online and the exceptions. I work on about 10 LEED projects within a year this is always an issue for us and the reviewer causing more review comments than necessary and more paper work on both ends. I did mention it to the GBCI on the Green Build and hope there will be a comprehensive guideline in the near future.

To add also another layer to the discussion: Guys, what has been your experiance so far with atriums and empty spaces inside the building. We are working on a shopping mall with extensive "holes" in the floor plates that take up about 80,000 sf. Shall we include it in the gross buillding area or not, or we can just exculde it from the calcs for the occupancy? Thanks!

I just did a project with a huge atrium. The space is semi conditioned, not intended to be used as a regular occupied space. We have listed it as circulation space in the Project Information form. In our case the atrium has no FTEs. If I remember correctly this new space category has been added to the selection to address the issue of this type of space, which are used by occupants, but don't have any FTEs. As for the holes, the gross square footageSum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building including basements, mezzanine and intermediate-floored tiers, and penthouses with headroom height of 7.5 ft or greater. It is measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls or from the centerline of walls separating buildings, but excluding covered walkways, open roofed-over areas, porches and similar spaces, pipe trenches, exterior terraces or steps, chimneys, roof overhangs, and similar features. is excluding penetrations. So a two story space only counts once.

Do you know whether building terraces (partially open to sky, partially covered) are included in the gross square footageSum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building including basements, mezzanine and intermediate-floored tiers, and penthouses with headroom height of 7.5 ft or greater. It is measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls or from the centerline of walls separating buildings, but excluding covered walkways, open roofed-over areas, porches and similar spaces, pipe trenches, exterior terraces or steps, chimneys, roof overhangs, and similar features. for occupancy calculations?

No, those are excluded.

Look at the BD+C CS Appendix 1:

"Gross square footageSum of the floor areas of the spaces within the building including basements, mezzanine and intermediate-floored tiers, and penthouses with headroom height of 7.5 ft or greater. It is measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls or from the centerline of walls separating buildings, but excluding covered walkways, open roofed-over areas, porches and similar spaces, pipe trenches, exterior terraces or steps, chimneys, roof overhangs, and similar features. is defined as the sum of all areas on all floors of a building included within the outside faces of the exterior wall including all floor penetrations that connect one floor to another. This can be determined by taking the building foot print and multiplying it by the number of floors in the building. Projects which contain underground and/or structured parking, may exclude that area from the gross square footage used for the calculation. Other spaces such as common areas, mechanical spaces, and circulation should be included in the gross square footage of the building."