Project Code Compliance - Suburban High School Project

So let's take a look at our suburban high school example project. So here we have a project where we have a big, important entryway, we've got admin space, and classroom space, some presumably big corridor, that kind of connects everything. That corridor probably reaches across, this is a two story classroom space, making a courtyard, couple of other courtyards, we've got big important spaces like cafeterias, and multipurpose spaces, theaters, things like that. And then we have a big, long span gymnasium of some sort, so fairly straightforward idea of how a high school might work.

We've got, you know, parking areas, and play fields, So from a code standpoint, what would be the things that would jump out at you? Like, how would start thinking about these things as you go along? First thing that would come to mind is going to be fire ratings and egress. So what are the fire ratings issues? Well, the fire ratings issues are going to be that, in order to create an egress path, all the corridors are going to have to be at a certain level of rating. What that rating is, whether it's one hour or two hour, it would be dependent on the size of the building, a little bit on the municipality, because of slightly different takes on this idea will be done by different folks.

But another thing that would make it, might alter that would be the idea of whether it was sprinklered or not. If it's a sprinklered building, you might be able to reduce how much fire rating you would need on something. So this idea of kind of understanding the fire ratings, very quickly gets into, not just what the building is, and how big it is, but also, you know, some of the detail decisions.

Would it be more expensive to add the sprinkler system, or more expensive to make all the walls, you know, three hour walls, or something like that? So you're thinking about the actual use by the people, and you're thinking about the cost structure, and try to sort of marry these things together, in some logical way. So the corridors are going to be at a very specific fire rating level, the stairs and the elevators will be at a very specific fire rating level, because we want to make those especially safe, so they would be at least as fire rated as the corridor system would be, probably one notch higher.

In a building like this, there would very likely be, sort of separations into different buildings, so you might have two, or three or even four different buildings, and what that's saying is, obviously, it's all one building, and it's one project.

But this space, for the gymnasium, that's a very different kind of space than the rest of the spaces, and it's going to have different kinds of events in it. It's going to have assembly events, where there's lots of people, and there's going to be assembly events where things are happening, and you know, maybe a concert is playing, or something, right. So lots of things could be going on in there, and it's hard to know exactly what might be happening in there.

You wouldn't really want that space to just sort of flow into a set of offices, or some classroom spaces or something, there would need to be some ability to have that be a separate space. So my guess is that the gymnasium is effectively it's own building, the way it's been designed here. Now there'll be situations where that's not true, you'd find ways to sort of fit into the code and other examples, but in a situation like this, where there's a clear definition, you can see where that building is. The doors and the walls between those two spaces, right in that zone, are just going to be at a very particular fire rating in order to divide those spaces out.

So these become their own buildings, within the larger building. And then if this is it's own building, it has to have egress in some logical way that can get everybody out. As we just said, it's an assembly space, so it's going to have even more egress than any of the other parts of the building. So that's one building, the multipurpose and the cafeteria, that's probably another sort of individual building, within the overall building.

And then just because we have these two big wings, there's probably a likelihood that the admin and classroom space here would be considered one building, and then the two story one would be considered it's own other building. So there's going to be egress issues, and fire rating issues that are going to separate out within these different buildings. So with a school, clearly those are going to be the big issues, you might find it surprising, but we don't like it when our schools burn down, right.

It's a problem, people would be very worried about it, so the codes are very particular about these kinds of issues. you have to be thinking about, you know, this is a public use, so all the ADA spaces, you'd have to be thinking about. What are the doors like? Is there a no-step entry everywhere? Do the doors have enough room around them, that somebody could maneuver?

Are the bathrooms set up in such a way that, somebody in wheelchair, somebody with a walker or a cane, or something could get through, and get to every space? So there's a lot of those kinds of issues that could really drive a lot of the design thinking here. The way that the code, mostly, in most parts of the country, is being reviewed these days, that really means that like, even all the sports equipment, you need to have access for as many people, as many ability types as possible.

So this is a pretty big impact on school design. One of the ways that people think about this, and we'll talk about this in another location, is the difference between accessible design, and universal design, and so this would be one of those spots where you'd be trying to bring in universal design issues, which is the idea that everybody should be able to use as many aspects of the building as possible. And then there's lots of other sort of code issues, right, I mean, this is a lot of people, there's a lot of different types of uses.

So for example, how many bathrooms are there, how would you figure that out? Well, you might have a reason from the client may have a particular desire to have a certain number because they want to maybe spread them out, so the kids aren't walking around the building all the time, that they have lots of places for people to go to the bathroom. Or maybe they don't like that, maybe they want to have really strict control over how it's going to work, and they want to bunch them together.

But the shear number is going to be a code issue, and that's going to be based on the number of expected students, the population of the building. And that would be the case in any scenario, it'd be the population of the building, that would be based on a square footage number, or possibly based on an actual number, if you could sort of show that, no, no, it doesn't really matter what the square footage number says, this is the real number that's going to be used. The reason that, that can be sometimes hard, that usually the code officials want you to base these things on occupancy/square foot, is because, well that's you, but what happens five years from now, when this becomes a charter school, or something?

It's a different school, but the building is there, and they jam more people in, or something like that. So all of those kinds of ideas, those are all going to be code related. Can people get out in an emergency? Do they need to be able to get out the windows, or are there regular doors, or egress systems? What about code issues in terms of the structure? Well, there's going to be a very strong concern about the long spans for that big open space, and then there's going to be other concerns, sort of generally, but those will fall mostly into sort of typical structure, and typical fire rating issues.

But for that long span, there'd definitely be a lot concern about that. What about civil right? How's the parking lot going to work, how's the driveway going to work? It has to fit into all of those sort of normal rules and regulations, zoning codes, and all of that.

So there's a whole array of different issues that are going to be thought about here. You know, start with the fire rating and egress, but it's going to go all the way through that to, how big is the parking space.

Log in to access files