A Permit Set That Does Not Meet Egress or Fit the Structure
The permit set for a tenant improvement shows a 60-foot by 30-foot assembly room with tables and chairs and no fixed seats, inside a fully sprinklered Type II-B office building. The room has one 36-inch door at the northeast corner and a second 36-inch door at the southeast corner, 18 feet from the first; both swing into the room and open onto a 44-inch corridor. The corridor dead-ends 55 feet past the second door before reaching a stair. The reflected ceiling plan calls for a 9-foot-0-inch corridor ceiling; the structural drawings show a 24-inch steel beam at the same location, with 10-foot-0-inch deck-to-deck framing, and the mechanical drawings show a 14-inch-deep duct main in that same corridor. The building department has already approved the permit set. Demolition starts Monday.
1. Compute the occupant load and determine whether the two doors satisfy the egress requirements. Show the numbers.
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Occupant load. Assembly with tables and chairs, no fixed seats, is unconcentrated assembly at 15 net square feet per occupant. 60 x 30 = 1,800 sf / 15 = 120 occupants.
Number of exits. At 120 occupants the room needs two exits (the single-exit allowance stops at 49 occupants). Two doors are shown - but the count is not the test.
Separation. Exits must be remote from one another, measured along the diagonal of the room. Diagonal = square root of (60 squared + 30 squared) = 67.1 feet. Required separation in a sprinklered building is one-third of the diagonal = 22.4 feet. The doors are 18 feet apart. They fail - they are effectively one exit serving 120 people, which is the single most serious defect in the set.
Swing. A room serving 50 or more occupants requires egress doors to swing in the direction of egress travel. Both doors swing into the room. Second violation.
Width. 120 occupants x 0.2 inches per occupant = 24 inches of required capacity, and the 36-inch doors provide well over that. Width is the one thing that is fine; the problem is location and swing, not size.
Dead-end corridor. 55 feet of dead end exceeds the 50 feet permitted in a sprinklered building. Third violation.
Raise all three by RFI to the architect of record before demolition. None of them is yours to fix in the field.
2. Evaluate the corridor ceiling against the structure and mechanical. What exactly goes in the RFI?
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The arithmetic. Deck-to-deck is 10'-0" = 120 inches. The ceiling is at 9'-0" = 108 inches. Available plenum = 12 inches. The beam alone is 24 inches deep, so its soffit lands at 96 inches - 8 feet above finished floor, a full foot below the ceiling plane. The ceiling cannot pass under it at all. Add the 14-inch duct plus hangers and grid (roughly 18 to 20 inches of assembly) and the conflict is not marginal; it is impossible.
What goes in the RFI - a specific, answerable question with a coordinated section attached:
- At the corridor location shown, the 24-inch beam leaves 96 inches above finished floor and the RCP calls for 108 inches. Confirm the intended resolution: lower and soffit the ceiling, reroute the duct, or reduce the beam (owner's structural engineer to confirm).
- Confirm the minimum required corridor ceiling height is maintained at the soffit (7'-6" is the usual corridor floor, but confirm for this occupancy and this jurisdiction).
- Confirm sprinkler head and lighting layout at the revised soffit, and whether the beam creates an obstruction requiring additional heads.
Do not resolve it yourself. Field-cutting the beam, dropping a bulkhead without a detail, or squeezing the duct into 12 inches are all design decisions. If you draw it, you own it - and the sprinkler obstruction and rating consequences land on you. Note the RFI date and request a response within five working days in writing, because this is now on the critical path before the corridor overhead rough-in.
3. The building department already approved these drawings. Who is responsible for the deficiencies, and what do you do now that they are approved?
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Approval is not absolution. Plan review is a check, not a guarantee, and in most jurisdictions an approved permit does not relieve anyone of the obligation to build to the code. But the allocation of responsibility between you and the designer is a separate question from the code question, and you have to keep them separate.
Your position as contractor: you are not the designer and you did not create the egress or the framing conflict. You are, however, the party who will fail the inspection and eat the delay if you build it as drawn. So:
- Written notice, now. Send the architect of record and owner a single letter identifying each item with the code basis: the exit remoteness (18 feet against 22.4 feet required), the door swing into a 120-occupant room, the 55-foot dead end, and the ceiling/beam conflict. Copy the GC's project manager and the owner's representative. Date it.
- RFI, not a field fix. One RFI per issue, each asking for a direction rather than proposing your own solution.
- Do not install the noncompliant configuration while you wait, even though the permit is stamped. Installing it and hoping the inspector misses it converts a design problem into your rework cost and your delay.
- Price the change. Adding a third exit, relocating a door, or reworking the corridor framing is a change to the contract documents, not a contractor error - but only if you gave notice before you built it and before the schedule absorbed it. The date of your letter is the date your claim starts.
- Watch the schedule claim separately. If the answer takes two weeks, the delay is not yours, and the notice letter is the foundation of that argument.