The Details

In a recent newsletter, I wrote about the issue of elevators being used as egress components. It was interesting to me to find ways to use an elevator to solve difficult challenges provided in a complicated historic renovation project. This time I have the compulsion to write about another "fun" elevator experience. This one however is in a new construction project and is really about complication and successful resolution. KAOD has been very blessed to be involved in a number of hotel projects with the Microtel franchise recently. We have seen numerous variations all with their own trials. This stemmed from one of those commissions.

One of our projects was a four-story building of wood frame structure. There was, of course, an elevator involved. Because of the residential nature of the occupancy and the height of the building, we spent a great deal of time looking into the Georgia Amendments to the IBC. Please make a habit of including them in your typical code review process. They can come back to bite you if you aren't familiar with these recent changes. The applicable code section in these documents points out the need for smoke control measures such as a vestibule or lobby at certain floors with limited openings in taller buildings. Such a demand on a small and extremely efficient floor plan could be detrimental to the project's success. This made our design study and research increasingly important. Because we have the resource of the franchise corporate office, we made sure to include their experience in our efforts. Historically, they had used multiple solutions to this challenge including having no smoke vestibule, and having one or two vestibules. Because of various jurisdictions and authorities, there was no clear cut solution. To Microtel's credit, their only concern was that we not only comply but exceed in any reasonable manner the final decision on standards.

After multiple discussions and interchanges of drawings, it was the State Fire Marshal's determination that each floor should have a smoke vestibule at the elevator door. This seemed a bit harsh as well as expensive but in effort to maintain the quality of the project, we accepted the ruling, provided an acceptable design solution and submitted for approval. It was received with no comments or mark ups.

About a month went by and the wise leader of the corporate office called to discuss the situation again. His inspiration was a project they had recently conducted that did not require review by the same State office but was reviewed by a local authority. Their interpretation required no changes to the initial concept and made the impact of going to four floors negligible. He suggested that we revisit the issue with the State and try to gain a more acceptable ruling. Thankfully, we had created a good rapport with the State office as we worked through this the first time. They were more than willing to look over the design again and even collaborate within their staff to see if there was some other valid point of view. As it turns out, there was. Because of their willingness to work with us and to seek multiple sources of input, the initial constraints were changed to allow us to do away with the smoke vestibules and thereby a great deal of unexpected expense, with no challenges to life safety.

There is a lot of technical and specific information such as code numbers and testing standards that we will not weigh you down with to explain this productive resolution. That is not actually the intended point of this article. The idea that we are trying to get across here is that the powers-that-be are not always as evil as they are often made out to be. We have found that it is possible to create good working relationships without adversarial overtones and that, when it comes down to it, this is a great asset for everyone involved. We will be able to take what we have learned from this experience and make it a practice to ask questions and collaborate even more effectively in future projects.