This returns to the Space Accounting homepage.
For buildings in MIT's Academic Portfolio, each room number begins with the building number followed by a hyphen. Following the hyphen the room number is constructed using the "hotel system". That is, a floor number ascending or descending from ground level is followed by a number for the room on that floor.
To help orient visitors as well as occupants, on the ground floor numbers for the rooms on that floor start near the principal point of access to the building and increase away from that point, and this pattern is stacked on the floors above and below. In addition, room numbers are placed on the floors using the "post office system". That is, even numbers are located on one side of the corridor and odd numbers on the opposite side. Gaps are often introduced into number sequences to allow additional numbers to be inserted in the event of future renovation. To assist in stacking these patterns from floor to floor, the structural grid formed by the plan of the building's columns is used as a format for constructing a basic arrangement of numbers then used as a guide for all floors.
At a finer level of patterning, rooms reached via other rooms are recognized using the "suite system". That is, rooms off the first-accessed room carry the number of the first-accessed room followed by a letter of the alphabet. At MIT, letters are assigned starting on the left at the principal entrance to the first-accessed room and moving clockwise. This scheme is sometimes recursive to the extent of two appended letters.
Of course, these rules are generalizations and departures often occur because of physical and historical circumstances encountered in particular buildings.
In a final detail, room numbers for rooms that have certain nonassignable room uses involving building service, circulation and mechanical areas carry specific suffixes, but these are rarely of interest to the average building user.
The definitions of room use followed at MIT are based upon those published in the April 1994 edition of the U. S. Department of Education's "Postsecondary Education Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual" (FICM) adapted and with additions to meet the circumstances of MIT's facilities and practice. They support the process of indirect cost recovery as well as processes of general administration and provision of community information.
These definitions of room use conclude the classifications and definitions begun with definitions of building areas at the Building Inventory Definitions link on the Space Accounting homepage. It should be noted that all space measurements relating to and space data recorded in the INSITE(tm) inventories are in terms of square feet.
The following link is also found on the Space Accounting homepage under "EXPLORATIONS": Room Use Definitions.
Building space at MIT is centrally administered by the Committee for Review of Space Planning (CRSP Committee) which assigns space to the organizations that use it. The organizations that are assigned space include academic Departments and Divisions and Whitaker College, independent research Centers and Laboratories, and administrative Offices. They also include the President's and Provost's Offices, Deans' Offices, Vice Presidents' Offices, and the Offices of the Chairman and of the Secretary of the Corporation. In the INSITE(tm) space inventory all assignee organizations are recorded as "Departments". Those of senior officers are also recorded as "Major Users". Thus, Major Users are listed as "Departments" in Web page indexes for reports by Department, reflecting the fact that they have space directly assigned to their Offices as such. They also are listed as "Major Users" in Web page indexes for reports by Major User, aggregating their own space with that of the Departments that relate to them as reflected in the MIT organization chart.
In the INSITE(tm) space inventory there are three Departments that are not actual organizations but are names used for administrative convenience as assignees of space. They can be grouped by the type of space assigned to them. In the definitions of building areas the distinction was made between "Assignable" space and "Nonassignable" space based on the Major Uses involved. The "departments" PHYSICAL PLANT and HOUSING PHYSICAL PLANT represent Nonassignable circulation, building service and mechanical spaces, whereas the actual organizations labelled PHYSICAL PLANT DEPARTMENT and HOUSING & FOOD SERVICES DEPARTMENT in the INSITE(tm) database represent Assignable offices and shops. The third Department that is not an actual organization is INSTITUTE RESERVE. As an assignee it provides the CRSP Committee with the flexibility to hold small amounts of Assignable space for short notice/short term needs, or for an assignment or disposition whose time simply has not yet arrived.
The following link is also found on the Space Accounting homepage under "ROOMS & USEABLE AREA": MIT by Organization Hierarchy.
Four data elements are required for each room recorded in the INSITE(tm) space inventory database. These include a unique MIT room number, a room use, an organizational assignment and the area of the room in square feet. This last is calculated automatically from the electronic floorplans found on the top level Space Accounting homepage. The two representations of the four required data elements, floorplans and database, graphic and tabular, are maintained synchronously to ensure reconciliation between the two formats.
The Space Accounting homepage has links to Building and Department Room Lists and to Departmental Special Interest Reports. In addition to the four required data elements these reports display another data element associated with each individual room and generically called the "Group" field. In the Departmental Special Interest Reports the column heading for it is variously labelled "Group", "Occupant", and "Section". Whatever data is displayed in it has been provided or requested by the departments to which the rooms are assigned.
Still other data elements are used for special purposes in some cases reflected in Departmental Special Interest Reports.
Two types of field audit of the room inventory are conducted. One is the systematic audit -- building by building, floor by floor, room by room -- looking into each and every room. For many years the standard has been to do this annually, covering the indirect-cost-recoverable buildings one year and the non-recoverable buildings the following year. This two-year cycle is prompted by the requirement in Bureau of the Budget Circular A-21 that building space inventories upon which federal indirect cost recovery is based be updated biennially.
The other type of field audit is the ad hoc audit, looking into each room -- ranging from a single space to an entire building -- that has undergone a space change. The standard here is to cover space changes as soon as possible following their completion, on a continuous month-to-month basis. This timely cycle is prompted by the MIT community's dependence for ready performance of a wide range of administrative tasks upon reflection of current data in both the database and the floorplans.
Both systematic and ad hoc audits are concerned with the accuracy of three of the four required data elements -- room number, room use and floor area as reflected in the configuration of the space. The square footage is calculated from its scaled representation in the electronic floorplans, thus change in configuration, observed during audit, signals change in area. Indirect cost recovery is based upon knowledge of room use and area together. Proper functioning of the database and of many administrative operations depends upon unique identification of each space by its room number. The fourth data element, organizational assignment, is determined by the CRSP Committee and communicated by its Secretary.