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#1 Posted : 05 March 2004 13:55:00(UTC)
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Posted By Joe Ridley
Hi there,

Can anyone help me out here, our company will be soon taking charge of a newly built sports centre and I have been asked to work out how many people there will be in each room, or space. Now there are different activities in each room, what I need to know is there a standard by which you work out how many?

Any help would be much appreciated

Cheers

Joe
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#2 Posted : 06 March 2004 11:23:00(UTC)
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Posted By Stuart Nagle
Joe.

Are you referring to employees in each room (or workroom) or to customers undertaking activities in each area of the sports complex?

If it is employees, the answers can be found in the Workplace Regulations. If customers, then an evaluation of several factors will be needed, for example:

- Reference to membership levels

- Number of Activities undertaken at various periods of the day

- Previous records of use of faciltiies by customers

- the design calculations for the original building (e.g. the Architect must have had some precept on which to base the design in respect of the liklely number of persons that will be using the faciltities at any one time)

- Fire regulations approval (e.g. the approval of the fire service in respect of fire precautions would have considered the likely number of persons to be in the complex at any particular time in respect of the number of fire escapes and fire fighting equipment ect required)

- Opening and closing times, hiring out of facilities (e.g. schools and private functions ect)

- Local Authority licencing would also have taken into account the number of persons likely to be in certain facilities within the sports complex (e.g. bar/restaurant etc)

Does the company operatate any similar complexes? If so these could be looked at in respect of records of the number of persons using the complex on a daily basis, broken down into peak and low periods, specific areas of the complexes and any problems highlighted as a result (i.e. oversubscribed/overbooked ect) and the accident and fire history, near misses, maintenance problems etc etc...

I would suggest that studies have probably already been done in respect of many if not all of these areas, in books or papers etc of one type or another, and it may well be worth discussing this with people such as, the Local Authority Planning/Buiding Control Officers, Fire Service, and some Professional Bodies, such as CIBSE, CIOB, RICS etc, who may well have publications that will enable you to undertake this task, and with some degree of accuracy...

Hope this helps...

Stuart
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#3 Posted : 07 March 2004 01:07:00(UTC)
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Posted By Miriam
Joe: There is a formula for calculating whether people have sufficient space to work in or not, which is as follows:
(Ignore any ceiling above 3 metres in height)Multiply room height(3m)x width x length. Divide the result by the number of people working in that room. Under the Workplace Regs, each person should have at least 11 square metres of space to work in. You also have to take into account the amount of furniture and equipment in a room which will also reduce working space.

Where your new sports centre is concerned, the architects of the new building should know the maximum capacity for the whole centre and for the individual sports rooms. Depending on the size of each room, the numbers you can SAFELY allow in each room should also be dictated by the nature of the activity, e.g Netball (people running around); aerobics (people standing most of the time, but each person needs enough space for horizontal movement of arms/legs; yoga (people stretching on the floor can take up a lot of space) therefore numbers in such a class may need to be less.

Equipment, e.g. spinning bikes, if they have to be stored in a corner can also restrict the numbers in a class on safety grounds, particularly if it's an activity involving a lot of running around/vigorous movement. The last thing you want is for people to trip over or knock their arms/legs on equipment stored in a corner! Ouch! Can be very painful both for the injured party and the operator of the sports centre in terms of any compensation they may have to pay out! So, in the first instance ask the architects what the maximum loading capacity is for each sports room. From the point of view of user comfort and safety, you may decide to allow in fewer people than what the architects recommend. Hope this is of some help. Miriam
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