Include some additional room types from Brick

[epaulson]

A bit back Sarah Macdougall went through and looked at some of the Brick rooms that they're using that aren't in REC - see this post: https://groups.google.com/g/brickschema/c/CvvoI4n9uSk

There are others missing but these are some that we'd love to see - can we hash out some ideas of either adding these or suggested alternatives?

Brick type	Real Estate Core equivalent
Break_Room, Breakroom	None
Cafeteria	CafeteriaRoom
Conference_Room	ConferenceRoom
Control_Room	UtilitiesRoom
Copy_Room	CopyingRoom
Cubicle	None
Electrical_Room	None
Entrance	Entrance
Equipment_Room	None
Hallway	Hallway
Janitor_Room	None
Laboratory	Laboratory
Lobby	None
Lounge	None
Mail_Room	MailRoom
Mechanical_Room	None
Office	Office
Office_Kitchen	Kitchenette
Open_Office	None
Reception	Reception
Rest_Room	Bathroom
Room	Room
Security_Service_Room	SecurityRoom
Server_Room	DataServerRoom
Service_Room	UtilitiesRoom
Shower	ShowerRoom
Space	Space
Storage_Room	Storage
Team_Room	None

[Booli]

We would also love to be more precies regarding models of rooms in our DigitalTwin.
@hammar How can we discuss this further?

[hammar]

Hi,

Great list, thanks! We certainly want to align with what exists in Brick already, to ensure a minimum of breakage. I've pulled out the unmatched room types from the table above and have commented on them individually below. Some are obvious additions to REC, for others I think a bit more clarity would be helpful, to ensure that we do not duplicate room types that we might already have -- and that we place new rooms in their proper place in the room taxonomy.

Note that the REC Technical Committee is on a summer break and that the next scheduled call (at which PRs are cleared for merger) will be on September 7. Nonetheless, am pinging TC memberships to add visibility and possibly additional comments: @PeteHart @cbupp @erikoskarwallin

Best,

Karl

Brick type	Real Estate Core equivalent	Karl's comment
Break_Room, Breakroom	None	Sure, should be added!
Cubicle	None	Not sure this should be modelled as a Room, which we generally take to be an enclosed area (to some degree). Propose the use of Workspace (subclass of Zone) instead.
Electrical_Room	None	I think this might be covered by ElectricityRoom?
Equipment_Room	None	Could we define more clearly what this is? Is it a room in which equipment is stored, or a room in which operating equipment that serves the building is mounted? Or something else?
Janitor_Room	None	Could we define more clearly what this is? Is it a staff room for janitors, a storage area for janitorial equipment, something else?
Lobby	None	What differentiates a Lobby from a Reception?
Lounge	None	Sure, should be added!
Mechanical_Room	None	Can we define a bit more closely?
Open_Office	None	Is this synonymous with OfficeLandscape?
Team_Room	None	Is a Team room distinct from a ConferenceRoom

[epaulson]

Easy ones first:

• Electrical_Room is probably the same thing as ElectricityRoom, probably just a color vs colour situation
• Janitor_Room is storage and supplies for janitors, plus maybe a small workspace (a good sink floor-mounted sink, for example)
• Lobby and reception are different - you can have receptions without lobbies, and lobbies without reception. Receptions might also be entered separately - the staff might enter it from a different door and the reception might interface to a different room through a window.
• A Mechanical_Room might be what you call UtilityRoom - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_room - from a US perspective I think Mechanical Room is the preferred term.
• I had honestly never heard the term 'Office Landscape' until this morning, but I think is what's intended. Wikipedia prefers that term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_landscape (they used to have a separate article for 'sea of cubicles', which was the derogatory term for it - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_of_cubicles&oldid=488255831 - but now they just fold it into cubicle or in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_plan#office_spaces )

That leaves Cubicle, Equipment_Room, and Team_Room, which I'll take up in a different comment(s).

(Pinging @gtfierro too just to keep him in the loop - I don't know Sarah's github ID)

[epaulson]

On cubicle, I think we could live with it being a zone and not a room - the most important thing really is that it's some kind of a space and we can talk about its adjacency/connectivity and containment, so I wouldn't want to just call it a piece of furniture.

I'd be careful about making too many assumptions about enclosed-ness for rooms - I think the fire folks are going to have the most stringent requirements on what is a room and what isn't. I'm hoping we can get some of those folks involved here soon - let's talk about it the next time we chat.

[epaulson]

Equipment_room is an oddball in Brick - we have it subclassed from TelecommRoom, to set it apart from distribution rooms like IDFs/MDFs (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_distribution_frame - I think we do want to break out this sort of hierarch), but there's also switch room and TETRA rooms (TETRA is a two-way radio thing.)

Maybe we wait on adding equipment_room for a little bit until we have a better sense of how it's used.

[epaulson]

Team_Rooms are close to conference room, though I would picture them different. (Conference rooms are maybe booked for temporary stretches, team rooms are assigned more permanently - they're not quite offices or even open offices, nor are they classrooms or lab spaces, but they're kind of like that) we We'll talk a little bit more in Brick to see if we really need it or if we can find some kind of better "assignable space" designation type we can use, or if we just say "make a team room a room"

[epaulson]

Finally I should track down a few more references, but we've been trying to be better about aligning to other sources for some of our classifications - one we used for Brick was actually from the Federal US Dept of Education - a guide that gets used for reporting space usage in universities, the "Postsecondary Education Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual (FICM)": https://kb.wisc.edu/images/group198/94467/FICM2006Edition.pdf

We weren't going to make classes for everything that's listed in FICM (or Omniclass/Uniclass/etc) so we just hit the highlights.

[sarahmacSE978]

I agree that we should differentiate a Team Room and a Conference Room based on Erik's definition above. I can ask how people are using Equipment room vs. Mechanical/Utility room. Thanks!

[erikoskarwallin]

Brick type	Real Estate Core equivalent	Erik W's comment
Break_Room, Breakroom	StaffRoom	StaffRoom or RestingRoom could be used
Cubicle None	None	Not sure this should be modelled as a Room, which we generally take to be an enclosed area (to some degree). Propose the use of Workspace (subclass of Zone) instead.
Equipment_Room	UtilitiesRoom	Has several subclasses for more precision
Janitor_Room	BackOffice	StorageRoom or StaffRoom or BackOffice
Lobby	Reception	What differentiates a Lobby from a Reception?
Lounge	None	Sure, should be added!
Mechanical_Room	UtilitiesRoom	Has several subclasses for more precision
Open_Office	OfficeLandscape
Team_Room	None	Is a Team room distinct from a ConferenceRoom

[epaulson]

I think Lobby and Reception are distinct and should be different classes, and a team room is distinct from a conference room and should also be a separate class.

We can live with Equipment_Room and Mechanical_Room being UtilitesRoom for now, I think.

We probably don't need to do anything special for Janitor_Room for now.