CRACKING THE CODE: Solving the Case of the Small Hotel Room

About This Project

The Code(s): CBC 2019, CEBC, and ADA 2010

The Players: owner, contractor, architects, AHJ, and TERPconsulting

The Accessibility Challenge: A Southern California hotel built in 1983 was renovating its existing mobility in guest rooms. The hotel’s small rooms proved a challenge to completely comply with the necessary accessibility requirements due to limited space in the bathrooms, room distribution, and bed size. TERPconsulting’s lead accessibility consultant determined that some items within the existing rooms were technically infeasible.

Utilizing CEBC Section 305.6, TERPconsulting’s CASp-certified consultant provided the AHJ with documentation of structural limitations and existing physical constraints that prohibited modifications to the hotel rooms’ elements and features to achieve full accessibility compliance with today’s code.

The Solution: To increase the overall accessibility of the mobility in the rooms, TERPconsulting’s accessibility expert worked with the AHJ to provide alternate solutions for equivalent facilitation to ensure compliance to the maximum extent feasible. Solutions included providing access to adjoining rooms for additional guest beds and investigating various furniture solutions to meet accessibility to the maximum extent feasible. In providing viable solutions for room types and sizes, TERPconsulting created more flexibility.

TERPtip: The various federal and state accessibility laws can be hard to navigate. Asking the right questions and always designing to improve accessibility should be the goal.

To find out if your project complies with accessibility regulations, contact TERPconsulting’s lead accessibility consultant Heather Younghusband, CASp, RAS.

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