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 1996 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 Standard proposes a comparison in form of established ratios
in order to compare one structure to another adequately. Today
ANSI/BOMA Z65.1 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 Asbuilt Services 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 Asbuilt Services 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
Asbuilt Services initiates the se-up for the structure, giving
the property manager initial set-up settings, which can later
be modified with changes in occupancy.
Prime Edge's BOMA plan management system currently does not support
In 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
1996 definition of the useable area, or occupied area of a floor
accounts for the floor common area. The most significant change
in the 1996 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 Asbuilt Services is often asked to provide ANSI/BOMA
Z65.1 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)
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