What is your buildings maximum persons building occupancy?…….and how do you know when you have hit the limit?
Sydney Tower Eye’s main observation deck is almost 50 m (164 ft) higher than that of Auckland’s Sky Tower. Sydney Tower has a maximum capacity of 960 people, you can only go up the tower by being electronically signed in and out allowing operators to know exactly how many people are in the building at any one time.
Who would have thought the size of a door determined how many people can be inside a building
In USA ….In order to determine the maximum number of people who are able to safely be in a room or building, the IBC recommends a certain number of inches of doorway per occupant. Exits that consist of a stairway need to have 0.3 inches of doorway per person, and all other exits need 0.2 inches of doorway per person. So a function hall that has a maximum occupancy of 1,000 people and an exit that consisted of a corridor without stairs will need 200 inches of doorway. With doorways at around 36 inches in width—wider than the Americans with Disabilities Act requires in the United States—that function hall would need approximately six such doors.
As mentioned, another important consideration for determining the occupancy of a space is the intended use of the space. A restaurant with chairs and tables will have a smaller maximum occupancy than a bar with an open dance floor or layout. The IBC recommends for spaces with unconcentrated use of chairs and tables, such as a restaurant, that 15 square feet on that floor of the building be dedicated to each occupant. That means a 500 square foot restaurant might have a maximum occupancy of 33 people. However the IBC recommends areas with concentrated use of chairs, such as a bar with a dance floor, have 7 square feet of floor space on that floor of the building per person. The same 500 square foot space in a bar with a dance floor would have a tentative maximum occupancy of 71 people. That said, those numbers are all dependent on whether or not enough exits exist to allow all of those occupants to safely leave the building during an emergency.
The impetus for these regulations in the United States dates back to the worst hotel fire in the country’s history. The Winecoff Hotel Fire occurred in the early hours of the morning on December 7, 1946 in Atlanta, Georgia. The 15-story hotel considered “fireproof” due to its brick exterior had a single staircase that allowed guests to move from the upper floors to the first floor. That staircase had turned into a chimney for the smoke and fire by the time that the first of the fire fighters arrived at 3:45 AM. A number of trapped guests tried to escape through their windows, but only a small portion trapped managed to survive their escape while the rest either died inside or fell to their deaths. The fire resulted in 119 fatalities which amounted to 41 percent of the hotel’s guests that night. Of the remaining, 65 were injured and the rest made it to safety whether because they were below the third floor fire level or were rescued by the 385 fire fighters who ultimately responded to the fire. This fire occurred just six months after the La Salle Hotel fire which killed 61 people. After these fires, President Truman ordered a national conference on fire prevention to revise fire codes for buildings.
Set the maximum occupancy limit for your building, office, manufacturing plant etc… then set a Trigger where if the Maximum Occupancy (total employees, visitors, and contractors on-site) is reached an email and/or sms is sent to nominated recipients in your organisation to alert them to the fact the Maximum Occupancy has been reached.
About WhosOnLocation, WhosOnLocation is a cloud service that brings together visitor, contractor, and employee presence, induction management, identity management, and access rights control into a single integrated solution. These services enable any organisation with an obligation to protect the well-being of its employees, visitors, and contractors as well as a need to provide security for its assets and intellectual property with a robust, secure, easy to deploy, easy to use, cost effective solution.
Would it help you if you knew exactly how many people were in your building right now?
