Overview · What & why
A decision, before a calculation.
Land area does not translate directly into rentable space. Buildings compete with access, setbacks, parking, service yards, drainage and landscape requirements. A conceptual program turns user needs into a testable schedule of areas and functions. It should identify both what earns revenue and what makes the revenue-producing space usable.
A concrete example
Eight acres contain 348,480 SF. A 100,000-SF single-story building occupies about 28.7% of the site before yards and roads. A 95% rentable efficiency applied to 100,000 gross SF gives 95,000 rentable SF, not 100,000.
What to remember
A useful program reconciles physical capacity with user function.
Before using this in a project: Survey, constraints plan, user space program, access requirements and a preliminary area schedule.