BOMA Asbuilt Plans

The BOMA Office Standard is the prevalent guideline for measuring leased office space in most of the United States, excluding some areas such as New York and Washington, D.C. where the GWCAR and REBNY standards are used instead. BOMA is an acronym for Building Owners and Managers Association and has been established to represent members of the commercial real estate industry. In its effort to standardize the leasing practice throughout the building management industry BOMA had developed a standard for measuring floor area years ago. BOMA standard has been modified and updated numerous times and current version is often referred to as ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 Standard Method for Measuring Floor Area in Office Buildings. The standard has been modified in 1996 and currently is the latest version of the BOMA. ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 2010 Edition includes very significant changes in a way the measuring office building compared to the earlier versions: structure is measured and evaluated as a whole as opposed to floor by floor classification. Such classification allows for a better comparison between the office structures, many of which have elaborate common area configurations, which have not been classified using earlier BOMA standards.

Besides setting a standard for area determination, ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 2010 Standard proposes a comparison in form of established ratios in order to compare one structure to another adequately. Today ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 2010 Standard has become a building management industry standard not only in United States, but in most of the North America. Due to the popularity and standardization, our clients rely on the standard to verify existing sq footages at the time of sale or deed transfer to a new owner, with every new expansion and interior remodeling project and at any time currently available building data needs to be modified.

Prime Edge LLC had developed a Facility Management system called PlanCue, which is a part of the AsbuiltEdge Technology package currently under development. Built on Microsoft's .NET technology, system allows our clients to use BOMA standardized plans, gives the property manager the ability to capture all areas in the building as rentable space on-line, including such areas as common areas, electrical rooms, mechanical rooms and others. Prime Edge LLC had created various options which allow property management professionals update tenant information, occupancy data and other essential information on-line, making it available to the entire property management team. Prime Edge LLC initiates the se-up for the structure, giving the property manager initial set-up settings, wthat can later be modified with changes in occupancy.

Prime Edge's BOMA plan management system currently does not support the 1980 Standard due to the fact that the rentable area in such method is calculated per tenant or per floor rather than on the entire building basis. From the start we chose to create the system based on the latest standard as it is the most prevalent in today’s market. Difference in between ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 2010 definition of the useable area, or occupied area of a floor accounts for the floor common area. The most significant change in the 2010 method includes the inclusion of building common areas in each tenant’s rentable area. These areas include such locations as main floor lobbies, electrical and mechanical rooms, service rooms, etc. - none of these were included in the rentable areas in prior BOMA Standards.

Prime Edge LLC is often asked to provide ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 2010 standardized asbuilt plans for buildings other than office spaces. In such cases we follow the standard incorporating basic concepts of the BOMA standard. Such plans, however, cannot be considered to the letter as areas can no longer be compared using same ratios as BOMA standards are created to apply to office buildings only. In cases such as this we will often recommend our client an asbuilt set o plans which would follow a number of other not as commonly used standards in the industry. Such may include REBNY Standard which is used in the New York metropolitan area and nearby areas. GWCAR is a Standard is used to measure leased office space in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. IFMA Standard is used for task such as space planning and strategic facility planning. AIA has created guidelines as to the design and area and volume of all types of buildings. NAHB Standard deals with the calculation of residential floor areas in single-family residences. Further information and publications with regard to the standard and ratios used can be found at the BOMA International web site (http://www.boma.org)