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Published Articles and Whitepapers

There is more to building area measurement than most people realize. In an effort to share current measurement issues with those in building design and management industries, BAM regularly publishes articles and whitepapers. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can easily download and read the articles summarized below by clicking on the highlighted links.

• Rentable Area: Opinion or Fact? suggests how using a published measurement standard and good documentation can make area calculations more fact and less opinion. Published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal in May of 2008.
• The most common modification to the BOMA Office Standard is the use of a single multi-tenant R/U ratio on all the floors of a building. This article from the February 2008 Colorado Real Estate Journal is an introduction to the method.
• The single R/U ratio method requires skill and significant attention to documentation. This whitepaper explores the reasons, methods and caveats of this common practice.
• Any design professional doing area calculations for leasing in a commercial property should read this article on Measuring Floor Area For Commercial Leases from the AIA Best Practices web site.
• A whitepaper titled BOMA Math: Feature or Bug? may help you understand why Rentable Areas calculated under the BOMA Standard change in ways you (and BOMA) didn't anticipate, and what you can do to correct the problem.
• The BOMA Design Constraint examines an issue critical to designers of commercial buildings. Published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal in May of 2007.
• Area Calcs - Like an Annual Physical is an article published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal that addresses the cause of square footage disputes and how to avoid them.
• Modified BOMA is a term that can leave you scratching your head. To find out more, read Modifying the BOMA Standard from the Colorado Real Estate Journal.
• Review this whitepaper on Understanding Common and Usable Area to clarify whether certain spaces and rooms can be classified as Usable Area or must be classified as Common Area under the BOMA Standard.
• This article on what commercial tenants need to know about area calculations will help any tenant that is about to sign a lease. From the July, 2005 issue of the Colorado Real eatate Journal.
• New technology is raising the bar for building measurment accuracy. Getting Down to Brass Tacks, published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal, shows how.
• One of a lessor's most difficult problems is dealing with a high R/U ratio in a building. This article published in the Colorado.Real Estate Journal offers advice on the best way to deal with this.
• Throw out that old measuring tape! Laser distance meters are more accurate and faster. This whitepaper, Laser Distance Meters, compares three low-cost LDMs that you can buy on the web.
• Both IFMA and BOMA publish office measurement standards that have different purposes and methods. This Comparison of the IFMA and BOMA Measurement Standards highlights the differences between the two standards.
• If you are designing or developing condomuniums and are in a state that has adopted the Uniform Common Interest Property Act, this article, Quandry for CICS, published in the April 6 2005 issue of the Colorado Real Estate Journal contains a warning about their square footage measurement.
• It doesn't seem logical, but in a weak economy, buildings seem to physically shrink along with their bottom lines! This article, published in BOMA Matters, The incredible Shrinking Building addresses this phenomenon.
• Standards for floor area measurement play the same role as standards for clothing sizes. This artcle, published in BOMA Matters, The Right Fit explores the role of measurment standards in leasing.
• Architects need to be experts in applying published measurement standards to their designs. Hidden standards: What You Don't Know Can Bite You was published in the AIA Small Project Forum Journal to alert design professionals to this need.
• The publication of the BOMA Industrial Standard fills a huge void in the real estate industry. Setting the Industrial Standard was published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal and BOMA Matters to introduce this new standard.
• Developers and landlords who mislead tenants in measurement methods are setting themselves up for major liability. Area Calculations: Documentation and Communication are Critical Today was published in the Colorado Real Estate Journal to alert property managers of some common problem areas.
• Lease Audits are in area of increasing concern among property managers. This article from Colorado Construction magazine discusses what a landlord can do to survive a lease audit.
• Cleanable Area Measurement has been a hot topic because of pressure to reduce operating expenses. This article from the Colorado Real Estate Journal looks at strategies for contracting for janitorial services that will minimize cleaning costs.

Any comments you may have on any of these articles are welcome. Please e-mail them to me at the address to the left. From time to time articles will be added to and purged from this list.