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Industry News

New BOMA Standard for Gross Area Measurement
- Nancy Johnson Sanquist, IFMA Fellow, VP of Marketing & Communications, Manhattan Software

The Building Owner and Manager’s Association (BOMA) International has been defining the way commercial real estate professionals measure their properties for nearly 95 years. Now, with the June 2009 release of The Gross Areas of a Building: Methods of Measurement (GRAMS) standard, BOMA provides a uniform basis from which building professionals can compute, communicate, and compare the measurement of buildings by gross area. According to James A. Peck, chair and chief elected officer for BOMA International, and senior director of asset services for CB Richard Ellis, “GRAMS presents a concise, easy-to-use method for measuring the gross area of a building, which ultimately helps property professionals do their jobs better.”

The standard is intended for application in buildings containing all types of occupancies, including office, retail, industrial, single and multi-unit residential, hospitality, entertainment and institutional buildings, both private and public. The two methods provided in the standard can be applied to both new and existing buildings containing single or multiple stories that are either owner occupied, or leased to one or multiple tenants.

BOMA International developed these two methods to clearly define the two gross areas of a building: the construction gross area and the exterior gross area. The larger measure of the two gross areas, construction gross area, includes the area defined as exterior gross area as well as other areas that have a structural floor, or are covered by a roof or canopy, that are typically unenclosed but within the building perimeter. The exterior gross area, the second method, is the total floor area contained within the measure line, a new term developed for this standard, and generally refers to the outside surface of the exterior enclosure of a building including structured parking.

The procedures for measuring the gross area outlined in the new standard not only serve the interests of property owners and managers but may also appeal to facility managers, brokers, appraisers, assessors, lenders, insurers, developers, construction and design professionals, and others who need an unequivocal, direct measure of the physical size of a building. They also permit communication and computation on a concise basis, no matter the purpose of the measurement. The methods contained in the standard are not intended for application to site improvements other than buildings.