What to pay attention to when it comes to area measuring standards
We’ve measured over 3.5 million m2 of building area according to various standards over the past 10 years, and we’re still observing the chaos that takes place in this area. It often is a result of the ignorance of the area measuring standards, or the lack of detailed guidelines on measuring the whole building or property portfolio. Looking over those 10 years I see a good trend rising among investors and managers – everything is going in the way of systematization, especially over the past 3 years. The “net worth” and “gross worth” approaches to measuring warehouses or shopping centers are becoming a thing of the past, and are replaced by measuring standards (BOMA Retail or BOMA Industrial) at last. The “net worth” and “gross worth” approaches were individually created measuring methods, different for each owner. The mess is a concern of both the tenants and the lessors. We’ve seen many times both sides surprised by the differences between the areas measured according to different standards, or even the fact that there are different standards. Building owners and managers are even more surprised when we show them the area difference in the measurement done by us, according to the same norm which was allegedly used to measure the same building. It turns out that the floor plans they have, and use for calculating taxes and lease rents, come from an unknown source. They often are drawings coming from architects concerning a different report range. Sometimes they’re some archival drawings, or what’s worse, measurements made at different stages of construction, which do not show the final and actual dimensions. Those differences can be seen in lease rents and property taxes. Below I elaborate on the most important issues that result in differences in measured areas. It’s worth knowing that they can often be avoided.
A large number of standards on the Polish market
Both Polish and foreign standards are used in Poland. Most popular foreign norms are BOMA, Tegova, GIF, RICS, and the Polish ones are the PN-ISO 9836:1997 standard and the Act on local charges and fees (UOPIOL). The PN 70/B-02365 standard is now archived. Currently an international IPMS standard is starting to appear on the Polish market, created to unify measuring standards across the globe. Its goal is to replace the currently used different standards, consistency and clarity improvement on the global real estate market. In my subjective opinion, it’s just the next standard that will not eliminate the current norms, and was made mainly for business reasons to create movement in the field, promote certain organizations and increase the lease area (as much as possible). I think that in a while a next “influence group” will propose, or impose a next standard made to fit their expectations. During the first half of 2017 I attended a series of open trainings in Poland, and what I emphasized (or at least intended to emphasize) the most was the fact that we don’t measure the usable area for commercial lease purposes in Poland – we measure only the lease area. The lease area understood as a combination of areas coming from different definitions found in a measuring standard. If we take Polish tenements as an example, in my opinion the lease area should be calculated only according to the PN-ISO 9836:1997 standard, and consist of: the usable area + partition walls area (partition walls are part of the construction area in the PN-ISO 9836:1997 norm) + doorway area in the partition walls + window recess area measured on the floor level to the wall area (window recesses are part of the construction area in the PN-ISO 9836:1997 norm, and are often quite large in size and absolutely used for office purposes) + doorway areas in construction walls. This kind of approach results in profit increase from the lease (it shouldn’t be controversial to the tenants, since the whole construction obviously isn’t small in size and is not included in the lease area). The term “common area” doesn’t exist in the PN-ISO 9836:1997 standard, so it should somehow be calculated and added to the lease area. It’s now visible that not only do we have an abundance of standards on the market, there also are norm modifications. If we take 100 buildings (or lease areas) maybe five of them will be measured according to a standard, the other 95% – not. Both sides of the lease transaction often do not know of the modifications. You can say that by modifying standards we create new standards, so I repeat: you should put in all lease agreements that it’s about an area that includes… And who describes well, and thinks it over first won’t have any problems for years. Who doesn’t do it… I feel sorry for the manager who will have to work with that property.
Area measurement standards
Why is it so hard to figure them out?
The lack of unification in area lease standards
When it comes to commercial lease we can apply any measuring standard, combine any norms, freely modify them or even create our own one (which I don’t recommend). We do what we want, you only need to word it well in the lease agreement. It’s best to have the geodesist that measured the building check what the lawyer has written in the agreement – from my experience there can be a lot of mistakes, which often result in financial claims.
The only standard that imposes an obligation in Poland is the PN-ISO 9836:1997, but only for notarial purposes. According to the area of this standard it’s used for notarial sale of apartments, premises, office and retail buildings in the RP area. Property record cards are established based on this standard in geodesy departments. The area values are put in notarial acts, land registers and extracts from building and premise registers. The area for property tax purposes is also measured according to the PN-ISO 9836:1997 standard. However, the building value is priced by an expert in an estimated operate based on the lease area (see point 1) according to any of the standards – usually the most beneficial to the seller. Another matter is the use of a standard for lease purposes, where you can choose any standard and freely modify it. As a result, lease agreements with areas measured according to a nonunified standard are presented to the tenants. Right now such cases make an overwhelming majority of my orders, while the modifications are generally done by excluding certain areas in order to reduce the building add-on factor to one greatly smaller than the measurements and calculations show. It’s worth noting that the tenants often have no knowledge on the differences between the standards. Where can the tenants get the knowledge from then? Apart from that, the lessors more and more often introduce different norm modifications, or combine standards in order to increase commercial areas. This is often accepted by the tenant by signing the lease agreement, who is often unaware of the following consequences. In those cases the tenant often pays not only for the common areas assigned to him because of the add-on factor, but also for partition walls, shafts, construction walls and support columns, which are not physically used by him. It all depends on the standard and the modification ideas. For example, in 2008 one of the owners of a luxurious apartment complex ordered an apartment area measurement at the outside perimeter of the exterior walls. Surely none of the buyers checked the purchased apartment area. We have encountered a couple of such orders in the years of our experience. On one hand, it’s a result of the poor awareness of apartment buyers, who blindly trust developers, and on the other hand clients spending a minimum of 300,000 PLN don’t want to pay about 700 PLN for a control measuring – this I do not understand. Over the 10 years of my company’s activity I’ve performed very few control measurements for the other side signing the lease agreement. And when I made such measurements, practically 100% of them turned out to be different in some way from measurements made by a different company – and I’m talking about differences exceeding the measurement accuracy.
The lack of control procedures for area measurements in offices
Ordering an area measurement, measuring the building and handing over the report – the work process seems to be simple. However, the ordering party can’t be sure whether the company performed the measurements correctly, because no national authority nor institution supervises those measurements, which happens with other geodetic works. Other geodetic works are filed in to the office and there they area subject of detailed control for about 30 days. If the building owner, manager or tenant wants to check if the area measurement made according to a particular standard (rather a lease area one) is correct, he has to hire a different company and cross-check it, which doubles the costs. In our work up to now we’ve pointed out other company’s mistakes many times, concerning the inclusion or exclusion of certain building areas for lease or tax purposes. Those mistakes usually were a result of the lack of knowledge about measuring standards or their incorrect interpretation. Apart from that, geodetic companies often don’t measure every single room – they often fit inaccessible areas in the floor plan basing on archival projects, which is not a true reflection of the real state. Such actions result in incorrectly calculated floor and building add-on factors, which are both used in calculating the lease area. Moreover, that low of a report’s quality and accuracy shows in the actions performed on the building over the years (redesigning, interior designing, managing the building). As a result the errors pile up. Let’s assume a tenant, who leases 3 whole levels in a new, 10 storey office, wants to check his lease area and the building add-on factor. There are no problems with him ordering a measurement of his excluded area for himself. If some differences appear, there are reasons for comparing measurements made by two geodetic companies in the presence of the owner. If one side points out obvious mistakes, errors in standard interpretation, the case is over. But if not, what then? Would a third geodesist measure the area? I’ve yet to encounter or hear about such a situation. But what about the building add-on factor? The lessor won’t check anything, and if I wanted to check (calculate) the building add-on factor, I’d have to measure the whole building, all the lease areas and common areas and then perform the calculations. I doubt the manager would allow disturbing (performing the measurements) the lease areas of other tenants. To sum up, you can check your own lease area (but not exactly either, if we lease a part of a floor and the lease boundaries between two tenants is calculated by the wall axis, we have to enter the neighboring tenant’s area to measure the wall coordinates from the other side, and then, having the coordinates of the wall from both sides, we can calculate the real wall width), but an individual tenant is not realistically able to check the floor and building add-on factors. When I was performing one of my recent measurements (measuring a single, small area belonging to a tenant) in a nice office building, I was surprised to hear that my control measuring of the lease area alone (without the common areas) was different from the one included in the agreement by over 4m2 (the office area was about 170m2). The owner was happy, because he didn’t exceed the tolerance limit. I’ll also say that to exceed this limit you’d need a lot, almost twice as much – and, I’ll repeat, the office had an area of 170m2. Maybe there’s no need to measure so precisely then? And why do geodetic department not control the area measurements according to PN-ISO 9836:1997? Because they are not familiar with it. And why don’t they control the measurements according to BOMA, Tegova, GIF..? Because they don’t know such things exist.
The lack of supervising the measurements and compiling of surface areas
Opposite to the last problem, this one is about the internal control in a measuring company. Building owners and managers often negotiate the measuring costs, up to the point when it’s nearly not profitable, which in turn translates to omitting the controlling step by the executive companies. The control consists of handing over the report to another person or a group of people, in order to verify it. Few companies have established control algorithms while controlling area measurement reports. The general rule of the whole geodetic field should be that no geodetic operation report should be presented to a client without a detailed control beforehand. Unfortunately, because of the mindset on the Polish market that the price is the most important thing, it’s impossible in many companies despite of their good intentions. So how long does a control last? Supposing the controlled building is a new, fully commercialized office building with an area of 10,000m2, so there are quite a few rooms inside, the control (a detailed control of everything) shouldn’t last longer than 1.5-2 days.
The lack of unified measuring technology
The area measuring method that is used by most companies is based on measurements performed using mainly a manual laser rangefinder. More and more often companies are using a more accurate mirrorless tachometer. The measurement is then written down on the measurement sketch, and later put in a program such as CAD by the same, or a different person. It should be pointed out that it allows for mistakes to be made 3 times: while reading the measuring result from the device, writing it down on the sketch and putting the values in the program. A stage when a mistake can also be made is the measuring itself, which is based on a laser beam that has to bounce off a right surface. The laser often bounces off a leaf of a pot plant standing on a cabinet, furniture or some paperwork instead of a wall. That’s why a controlling stage is crucial when using this technique, and as spoken about before it’s often omitted. We’ve come up with an innovational measuring system and automatic insertion of the values into a program such as CAD at the place of measuring, which allows the order to be completed much quicker and the controlling stage to be omitted with practically 100% of the errors eliminated. This system is used by only about 3 companies in Poland. It’s also worth knowing that in Poland there are “experts” who measure individual premises using an ordinary metal measurer – extremely experienced civil engineers.
Let’s focus on the issue of measurement accuracy. In the standards the margin of error is usually 1 cm, which for me is absolutely too much. With the modern technology available, it should be 0.5 cm at the measuring point. Let’s suppose our margin is 1 cm – if a flat is about 65m2 (three rooms, kitchen, bathroom, toilet) the errors are within about 0,4m2 one or the other way. A simple calculation, all you need to do is take the inside perimeter of each room and add them together. The result will be, depending on the flat’s layout, about 80 meters of combined wall length. Then you need to picture a rectangle 80 meters in length and 1 cm in width (measurement accuracy) – it gives us an area of 0,8m2. You can get the measurement off by a half both ways, so about 0,4m2. I’ll say right away that it’s a big error when it comes to a flat this size, and to make such a mistake, a geodesist would have to perform the measurements very sloppily.
No model of a final report and information range
It’s very burdensome both for us, geodesists, and the people ordering area measurements. Building owners or managers often don’t know themselves what information range or level of drawing detail they need. It’s always us, because of the broad range of experience in this area, who tells the ordering party what could be useful now, or in the future. The ordering party often limits the range of elements included in the report wanting to save some money, but later comes back and orders next ones – which obviously costs more. The money needed for such operations is undoubtedly charged from the tenants. People ordering measurements because of the position they have in their company (e.g. a procurement specialist) often don’t have factual knowledge about the requirements of building architects, interior designers or network engineers. It’s happened to us that a measuring of a whole floor leased by one tenant, in accordance with the BOMA norm, was ordered, and in order to lower the report costs, the ordering party decided not to draw partition walls and doors on the plan, or to exclude the dimensioning and other basic architectural elements that should be included in the drawing. The necessary information that needs to find its way in the area measuring norms report is, apart from the plan: what norm is used, modifications of that norm (put them right away on the floor plan), the date of compiling the report, the location of the measuring in relation to the whole floor, a table containing area measurements along with the definitions used in the mentioned norm, company information. During the 10 years of my work, I think I’ve gotten over a dozen of such orders – I received a paper version of the area measurements and I had to figure out the measuring norm used in that drawing.
Too frequent changes in the standards and legislations
To get the whole picture, I present a summarized chronology of changes in chosen standards. The PN-ISO 9836:1997 standard and the Act on local charges and fees (UOPIOL) are obligatory in civil engineering. In 2012, the PN-70/B-02365 norm from the 70s was withdrawn – despite that, it will continue to be present on the measuring market for a long time, since about 80% of residential buildings are measured according to this norm. The BOMA standard was introduced in 1996, and modified in 2010; the Tegova standard was created in 1997 and later changed in 2012. The GLA method of measuring is created by shopping center owners, and each owner uses it how they want, differently with each building. The aforementioned IPMS norm was introduced to the market this year. When you add the mentioned before modifications and combining the norms by the tenants, you end up with a chaos resulting in inability to compare buildings with similar parameters, areas or constructions. As an example a simple, ordinary warehouse can be measured according to the following norms (in order from the best for the tenant, to the worst for the tenant):
– The Act on local charges and fees (UOPIOL)
– PN-ISO 9836:1997
– PN-70/B-02365
– Net worth – in market terms
– BOMA Industrial
– Gross worth – in market terms
And what does a wise property portfolio owner do? He measures one property according to one or two standards, makes a modification and chooses one, modified standard according his needs and market requirements, gives opinions on such propositions both inside and outside the company. The whole property portfolio is measured and compiled according to one set of rules (tenements can have their own, as well as office buildings, warehouses and shopping centers). You can’t set the same rules for all the mentioned building types – that’s exactly why the BOMA standard has the BOMA Office, BOMA Industrial and BOMA Retail standards. There is no BOMA norm for tenements, and there probably won’t be – that’s why I propose my own approach to lease area in tenement houses, which also can be, should be adjusted to particular objects in some cases.
And what does a wise geodesist do? He keeps the updates of all measurements of a building in one CAD file. Individual levels are laid out horizontally, left to right, and if after some time a measurement of any of the floors is made, that updated level is put above the old one. That way, over the years, columns with each measuring of the level (or part of it) are created, and we have physical control over it all. If a new building manager asks why a measuring from 6 years ago resulted in a different area, a geodesist should be able to answer and precisely explain where the difference came from in 10 minutes.
Norms not detailed enough
Building constructions and the elements they consist of (e.g. mezzanines, empty spaces, overhangs or beautiful facades) are getting more and more elaborated. The standards simply don’t include or describe every measuring rule. It results in making decisions at the place of measuring and in agreement with the ordering party what exactly should be done, because the standard doesn’t provide information for such a situation. It translates to including or excluding certain areas in the report, and later in the lease area. That’s why it’s good to have one company take care of the whole property portfolio, who will measure all areas the same way, will manage it all and help with creating an updated Rent-roll. What do you do when you have inquiries? There are no problems with asking the creator of the standard. In the last 2 years I’ve sent over 40 questions to the Polish Committee for Standardization about the PN-ISO 9836:1997 and PN-ISO 9836:2015-12 standards. Unfortunately, most of the answers didn’t bring anything new to the table. You can inquire the BOMA or GIF organizations the same way, the only question is whether the investors, managers or people from the commercialization department have the time to answer… surely not.
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Author: Adrian Hołub
Translation: Julia Pająk
Contact
Monika Hołub
Co-owner Polish Geodetic Group
szkolenia@geodezyjny.com
Tel.: +48 785 041 07
Adrian Hołub
Co-owner Polish Geodetic Group
adrian.holub@geodezyjny.com
Tel.: +48 608 577 042
