Common Building Code

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---
schema: foundry-doc-v1
title: "Common Building Code"
slug: common-building-code
category: building-design
type: topic
content_type: topic
quality: pre-build
status: active
audience: customer-woodfine
bcsc_class: current-fact
language_protocol: PROSE-TOPIC
last_edited: 2026-08-24
editor: pointsav-engineering
short_description: "Woodfine's internal washroom-provisioning standard, layered on top of jurisdictional building code and keyed to Tenant Mix and daily foot traffic rather than code minimums alone."
paired_with: building-design/common-building-code.es.md
---

Woodfine's Common Building Code sets washroom provision by Tenant Mix and daily foot traffic, not by whichever jurisdiction's code minimum happens to apply to a given Development Site. A leasehold that draws daily visitors who come and wait — a medical practice, a laboratory with client intake, an academic or civic office with public-facing service — gets a washroom built into the Key Plan for that leasehold. This applies whether or not the applicable Local Code requires one.

## Why local code alone is not enough

Woodfine develops across multiple jurisdictions — Canada, the United States, Mexico, and several European markets — and Local Codes governing washroom minimums vary across all of them. Building each Development Site strictly to whichever Local Code applies would leave the amenity a leaseholder receives dependent on where the parcel happens to sit, not on how that leasehold is actually used. The Common Building Code is built by taking the most onerous requirement among the jurisdictions Woodfine builds in — a Class-A specification applied consistently, then adjusted only where a given jurisdiction's Local Code diverges from it.

## What it replaces

The Common Building Code replaces reliance on Local Code minimums as the sole standard. A Local Code may not require a leasehold-level washroom at all. But a leasehold with a high volume of daily Users — a dental or medical practice is the clearest case — will overwhelm the Building Core Washrooms shared with every other tenant on the floor if it is not given one of its own. That is not a hypothetical: it is the specific failure the Common Building Code is written to prevent, and it is unfair to the other tenants on that floor when it happens.

## The washroom requirement by tenant category

The Common Building Code applies the requirement across [[mix-of-use|Woodfine's five professional tenant categories]], scaled to leasehold size. A Medical leasehold requires its own washroom at Medium and Large [[key-plans-and-tiles|Key Plan]] sizes, though not at Small. Academic and Civic leaseholds follow the same rule — required at Medium and Large, not at Small. Business leaseholds require a washroom only at Large. Laboratory leaseholds do not require one under the Common Building Code, reflecting a different visitor pattern than the other four categories. Where an additional washroom is required, Woodfine's preference is to separate the Accessible Leasehold Washroom from the leasehold's reception and waiting area — typically down a hallway nearer the staff room — for the privacy that placement close to reception does not offer.

## Consequence for tenant fit and asset consistency

Because the requirement is set once, at the Key Plan level, it travels with the [[fixed-floor-plates|Fixed Floor Plate]] into every deployment of the same prototype class rather than being renegotiated site by site. A prospective Medical or Academic tenant evaluating a Woodfine leasehold is evaluating a Key Plan that already accounts for its foot-traffic pattern, not a leasehold that will need a change order before it can accept high daily visitor volume. The Common Building Code is, in this sense, an extension of the same discipline that fixes the [[fixed-floor-plates|Floor Plate]] itself. Emergency egress, exit widths, and circulation are worked out once to a Class-A standard that clears every jurisdiction Woodfine builds in, and the Key Plans and Tiles are never redesigned around a Local Code's safety provisions. Only the washroom allocation is tuned — and it is tuned to the tenant, not the code.

## See also

- [[mix-of-use]] — the five tenant categories the washroom requirement is keyed to
- [[key-plans-and-tiles]] — the leasehold geometry the requirement is built into
- [[fixed-floor-plates]] — the floor plate discipline the Common Building Code extends
- [[design-sequence-priority]] — where the Leasing Plan is fixed before Building Services applies this standard