Best Practices for Project Management, Design, and Construction of ...

create confusion. The discipline having the greatest responsibility should provide the
detailed information on their plans and other drawings should reference those plans.
Some information is needed to be reflected on all plan drawings to assist reviewers to assess
compliance. This is particularly true for fire-rated partitions and other life-safety components that
establish the compliance needs for mechanical and electrical work. It is highly recommended that
all plans use common graphic, symbolic linework that identify the following:
• One-hour fire partitions for corridors.
• Rated walls for one, two, three, and four-hour occupancy separations.
• Smoke barrier walls for smoke compartments.
• Two-hour rated horizontal exit walls.
• One and two-hour enclosures for stairs and shafts.
Examples of recommended graphics for life-safety plans and base floor plans used by all
disciplines are provided in an appendix to this section.
General Nomenclature
When developing the floor plans in the early stages of design, it may be appropriate to use
terminology that comes from the hospital’s staff, so all spaces required by the program may be
accounted for in the schematic layouts. However, as the plans develop into construction
documents, it is equally important that the room names and space designations reflect, as closely
as possible, the code definitions provided in the CBC. The importance of this relates to conveying
on the drawings both what the room functions are relative to the code, and asking those reviewing
the drawings to locate and account for required functions being included in the hospital plan.
Definitions are located at the beginning of each chapter of the CBC, specific to the chapter, as
well as a general listing of definitions located in Chapter 2 for each of the California Building Code,
Mechanical Code, Plumbing Code, Fire Code, and Chapter 1, Article 100 of the Electrical Code.
Some examples of common room names that can create confusion about occupancies include:
• Rooms that function as storage, but may be labeled “utility” or “supply.”
• Rooms labeled as “Procedure,” but do not define intended operations.
• Patient rooms labeled as “Step-down,” “Fast Track,” or “Flexible,” that do not fit
code-defined uses.
Terminology related to egress and components of the means of egress are also subject to
misunderstandings when not carefully coordinated with terms used in Chapter 10 of the CBC for
Means of Egress:
• Use of the terms “corridor,” “hallway,” or “hall,” and “exit passage.”
• And proper descriptions for “exit,” “exit passage,” and “exit discharge.”
When providing information on fire-rated construction and components defined in Chapter 7 of the
CBC for fire and smoke protection features, utilizing code-compliant language when describing
(OSHPD Best Practices) Page 15 DRAFT FINAL, Sept. 2011