On the practice exam, there is a question which asks what impacts the number of exits required in a building. One of the answers is the common path of travel, which in my experience impacts the location of the egress component but not the number of them. Conversely one of the incorrect answers was construction type, which impacts your allowable floor area/occupant load and whether the building is sprinklered which impacts your travel distance. Can you explain why the common path of travel would impact the number of exits, particularly in the programming phase?
Hi @graemesowerby - if a building only requires 2 exits, for example, but is particularly long or large, a 3rd exit could be required in order to comply with common path of travel requirements, even if only two are required based on occupant load.
Thanks for responding. I guess my question was why the common path of travel would be more of a driving factor than the construction type in the PA exam. Typically, you wouldn’t start looking at travel distances or common path of travel until you started design the layouts.
I think since Objective 4 of the exam overlaps with Schematic Design, you’ll need to carefully discern whether to put your programming hat or your SD hat on.
PA is somewhat poorly named - it doesn’t cover only programming and analysis, but also the schematic design phase.