Glossary
and ventilation, floor covering, finished walls, and accessibility. The following represent
uses of office space:
General purpose office space.
Private corridors.
Meeting rooms (without special equipment and HVAC).
Training rooms (without special equipment and HVAC).
Libraries (without extensive built-in stacks and special floor loading.
Storage in office space.
Credit unions (without fixed equipment).
Lounges (other than toilet areas).
Reception areas.
Hearing rooms (without special equipment and HVAC).
Mail rooms.
Table areas in cafeterias (without supplementary HVAC or other special
features).
File areas (without increased floor load).
Wellness/physical fitness facilities (exercise and/or locker areas finished to
office standards).
Child care facilities (except toilets and kitchen areas).
Office Support Space: All secondary/shared workstations, extraordinary circulation
space, and those specific and discrete areas constructed as office space and used to
meet mission needs outside the agency's requirements for housing personnel. This
includes space for mission needs such as reception/waiting areas; hearing, meeting,
and interview areas; file areas; central storage areas; processing areas; and library and
reference areas. Such space is most cost effective collocated with normal office space.
Office Support Space Allowance/Percentage: The percentage of office space, over
and above the primary office space requirement, which is allocated for office support
functions. This percentage is calculated by dividing the total office support space by
the total primary office space square footage.
Open Plan: A type of space planning in which the use of full-height walls is minimized
to permit maximum flexibility for re-arrangement at a future time. Open plan may
involve use of free-standing screens or systems furniture panels.
Panels: Generally, this refers to systems furniture panels which join together and can
support other components, such as work surfaces and cabinets, hung on them.
Partitions: A wall, usually made of studs and gypsum board, which extends from floor
to finish ceiling (or/to the underside of the floor structure above). Compare with
"screens" and "panels."
Personnel: The peak number of persons to be housed during a single 8-hour shift,
regardless of how many workstations are provided for them. In addition to permanent
employees of the agency, personnel includes temporaries, part-time, seasonal, and
VBA Design Guide
Page 5-18
Previous Page
