Are you aware of the new BOMA Floor Measurement Standards and possible impact on your buildings? 

For nearly 95 years, BOMA International has sponsored the standard method for measuring Floor area in office buildings. This BOMA Standard has been accepted and approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). It is the method of measurement used by building owners, managers, facility managers, occupants, appraisers, design professionals, measurement professionals, leasing professionals, lending institutions and others to compute rentable areas in office buildings throughout the United States, Canada, and many other countries throughout the world.

The 1996 Standard (Z65.1-1996) has been used for office buildings for the past 14 years.   Up until 2004, the Standard simply consisted of an Office Standard for calculating Rentable areas in typical office buildings that had some ground floor retail areas.  In 2004 BOMA released the Industrial Standard, to be applied to all buildings that had more than 50% of space classified as ‘non-office’.

However, in 2007 a major new initiative was announced between BOMA and IFMA (International Facilities Managers Association) to adopt and release a ‘Unified Approach for Measuring Office Space’.  Both organizations realized they needed to standardize common terms and definitions used by both leasing and facilities management professionals.  This document was to become the new basis of all future BOMA Measurement Standards.

In the past year, BOMA has released new Standards (Office 2010) for multi-tenant and single-tenant office buildings in compliance with this IFMA/BOMA Unified Approach, and are currently working on new Standards for retail space, mixed-use space, multi-tenant residential space, and Industrial space.