Yes, that is the question, as others often say. I say this is probably inadequate for a real office that is fully staffed, and working days are 8 or 9 hours, so diversity by both time and load is not applicable. Mike is quite right in that all the real offices I have ever worked in were pretty power-hungry, often inadequately lit, and some too cold to work without extra clothes, all of which hit productivity so are not cost-effective. 27W per square metre is probably enough for just lighting, perhaps all these people use pens and not computers, but I doubt it. An office which is 1/6 occupied is not a real figure, it is taking the maximum occupancy allowed per sq metre, and allowing for desks, cabinets, walkways and all the plants and dividers of course. A fairly full office probably has one person every 3 or 4 square metres, so the 54W figure probably could just about be met. Please do ask the other questions I suggested, they commonly come up in designs. In my home office, about 7 sq metres I have 3 computers, a laser printer, shredder, 2 desk lights, 2 chairs and about 5kW of other equipment, bits of which I use occasionally but rarely all of it, fed from 2 13A sockets to the supply. The total LED lighting is about 20W per sq m, until I use a 500W tungsten spotlight for videography. That could be replaced with a 100W LED I suppose, but you can see how it all adds up. If people are going to use skype and zoom, getting a decent picture does need light in the right direction, and sufficient to fade the rest of the office somewhat so that it is not distracting. BTW, I hate bookshelves as a background, they often give far too much of an impression of the speaker, particularly if the book titles can be read! There was a recent incident which caused severe embarrassment to someone to a lady, I wonder if you saw it on the BBC?
My office is a bit full, but you will get the idea!
Thank you for your replies and guidance. All responses are very useful and I think going forward the best practice is to clarify this with the Client as it is opened to interpretations.
