Program Reader

A programme arrives as a spreadsheet and gets designed against as though every number in it were the same kind of number. They are not. Some were measured in a building somebody works in now, some came from a standard, some are what a department head asked for, and some are the previous row plus ten percent.

The total at the bottom is the sum of all four and is treated as a requirement.

Workflow

Step 1. Establish what kind of document it is

Ask, in one message:

1. Who produced it: the client, a user group, a consultant, a previous architect, or assembled from several?
2. When, and has anything changed since?
3. Is it a requirement, a proposal, or a wish list? Has anybody agreed it?
4. Is there a budget attached, and was it tested against this?
5. Are there notes, a second sheet, or a covering document?

Question 3 matters most. A programme that has been agreed is a contract of sorts; one assembled from user group requests has not been reconciled with anything, including itself.

Step 2. Mark what each figure rests on

The core of the reading. Row by row:

Space	Area	Rests on	Confidence

Rests on is one of:

• Measured. Somebody measured an existing space and this is it.
• Standard. From a published or institutional standard, named.
• Asked for. A user or a department said this.
• Derived. Calculated from a count: people, beds, seats, stations.
• Unknown. Nobody can say, and it has been in the spreadsheet for two years.

Report the counts. A programme that is mostly asked for and unknown is a wish list, and knowing that before designing against it changes the conversation entirely.

Step 3. Find the area basis, or the absence of one

• Is the figure net, usable, gross, or unstated? Point at area-measurement.
• Is a circulation, structure or services allowance included in each row, added at the end, or missing?
• Is there a net-to-gross factor stated, and where did it come from?
• Are different rows on different bases? This happens whenever a programme was assembled from several sources, which is most of them.

A programme with no stated basis is not a number a building can be designed to, and saying so is the most useful thing this produces.

Step 4. Check whether the arithmetic closes

• Do the rows sum to the stated subtotals, and the subtotals to the total?
• Are quantities multiplied correctly: room count times area?
• Is anything double-counted, especially shared or support spaces?
• Is anything counted that a building does not have: a role rather than a room, a function that lives in another space, an item of furniture?
• Is anything missing that every building has: circulation, plant, risers, toilets, storage, cleaning, waste, arrival?

That last list is where programmes are quietly short, and the shortfall lands on the gross factor nobody set.

Step 5. Read what the programme implies but does not say

• What the counts imply about occupancy, and therefore about egress and fixture counts. Point at design-occupancy-load and /count-plumbing-fixtures.
• What any room demands that is not an area: height, daylight, acoustic separation, a service, a floor loading, an adjacency.
• Whether any single space is large enough to decide the building's shape.
• What the programme assumes about how the organisation works, which is a claim and is often out of date.

Step 6. Report

• What kind of document it is and whether it has been agreed.
• The rests on counts, with asked for and unknown named.
• The area basis, per row where it differs, or that it is unstated.
• Where the arithmetic does not close.
• What is counted that is not a room, and what every building has that is missing.
• What the programme implies for code and services.
• What to ask, and of whom.

Then name brief-review for the interrogation, area-measurement for the basis, space-program to track it from here.

Step 7. Save, if asked

Ask whether to write the reading to a file and where.

Rules

• Mark what every figure rests on, and count the categories.
• Establish the area basis, per row if it differs, or say there is none.
• Check that the arithmetic closes.
• Name what is counted that is not a room, and what a building has that is missing.
• Ask whether it has been agreed and by whom.
• Never supply an area standard or a benchmark.

Anti-patterns

• Designing against the total.
• Treating a measured area and a department's request as the same kind of number.
• Assuming one area basis across a document assembled from several.
• Missing that the rows do not sum.
• Accepting a net-to-gross factor with no source.
• Overlooking plant, risers, circulation and storage because the programme did.
• Interrogating the brief before its numbers are understood.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.