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THE ARCHITECT'S ANGLE
March 2014
Greetings!

 

This month our lead article focuses on De-Mystifying Building Life Safety Codes. Our reference article is Assembling a Public Assembly.  We value your opinion.  Tell us what you think.  We look forward to hearing from you.
De-Mystifying Building Life Safety Codes
  

Buschwick Center with

Helene Marcus Interior Designs 

 
The National Fire Protection Association's "Life Safety Code" (known as NFPA 101) has been around in some form for over 50 years. For most of that time, NFPA 101 was a code standard applied by State Health Departments to regulate the construction and alteration of health care and health related facilities.
 

Over the past decade, building codes across the country have moved towards standardization through local adoption of the International Building Code or IBC. Although many jurisdictions create local code supplements, the core of the IBC is now, for the most part, a national code.

 

The IBC in turn, adopts the NFPA "Family of Codes" as reference standards. Foremost of these is NFPA 101. So now, whether you own or operate a hotel, a school, nursing home, a community health center or any number of other occupancies, your building is being regulated in some part by NFPA 101. 

   

Continue Reading

Assembling a Public Assembly
  
Westchester Center

In recent months, I have gotten numerous calls from clients who have received Building or Fire Department violations regarding a place of assembly within their facility. In fact, I have received so many calls on this subject that I thought dedicating this month's newsletter to places of assembly might be helpful to our clients, colleagues and friends.

 

First let me clarify the difference between an assembly occupancy and a place of assembly.  An assembly occupancy is a room or space where persons gather for religions, civic or social functions. If the number of persons in that room is 75 or more it must be classified as a place of assembly (in some jurisdictions, the number is 50).

 

The number of persons (or occupant load) in a place of assembly is derived by taking the square foot area of the space and dividing it by a tabular building code value (most often 12 net square foot per occupant). Therefore, a 2,000 square foot room area, divided by 12 net square foot per occupant would have 167 occupants. Since there are more than 75 persons by tabulation, this theoretical room must be classified as a place of assembly.

 

 Continue Reading

We hope you enjoy this month's issue.  Do you have questions or feedback about the information provided or regarding your facility that we can answer? Contact us at [email protected] and we will be happy to provide you with any additional information you may need. We want to continue to offer content that interests you, our readers. Please drop us a line and let us know what topics you might want to learn more about. As always, we love hearing from you. 

 

Sincerely,

John Baumgarten
John W. Baumgarten Architect, P.C.
We
can
help

If you have recently been surveyed by the Department of Health and have been cited with a physical plant violation, we can help you with your plan of correction. In older facilities, we can implement a Health Department approved Fire Safety Evaluation System (FSES) and allow you to "grandfather" some original conditions that are expensive or in some cases logistically impossible to correct.

 

FSES is a National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) published system and allows a facility to take advantage of alternative methods of life safety outlined in NFPA 101A.

Call us for a complimentary consultation at (516) 939-2333 or email us at [email protected].