A room book records every room of a building as its own data record: room number, floor, use, area under a named standard – and, depending on purpose, fittings, finishes or cleaning areas. It is the exchange format between design, tendering and operation and the form in which CAFM and ERP systems expect room data.
In short
- One row per room, uniquely identified; floor and building totals derive from it, not the reverse.
- Few columns are mandatory – identification, location, use, area with its standard – the rest depends on the purpose.
- A room book is only as good as its source: plan, survey or lease must be identifiable per row.
Definition
The HOAI lists the room book as a special service of building design (Anlage 10): “Aufstellen von Raumbüchern” (setting up room books) in preliminary design (work stage 2), “Fortschreiben von Raumbüchern” (updating room books) in design development (work stage 3) and “Fortschreiben von Raumbüchern in detaillierter Form” (updating them in detailed form) in construction documentation (work stage 5) – there also the “Aufstellen einer detaillierten Objektbeschreibung als Grundlage der Leistungsbeschreibung mit Leistungsprogramm” (a detailed building description as the basis of the performance specification), whose core is a room book. In operation it lives on as the CAFM system’s room master data and the ERP’s area basis.
Typical fields: identification (building, floor, room number, designation), use (use category under DIN 277, CAFM room type), geometry (floor area with its standard, perimeter, clear height), fit-out (floor, wall, ceiling finish), fittings and services (connections, built-in fixtures), operation (cleaning group, cleaning and glass areas, cost centre), provenance (source, revision, check status).
Distinction
| Document | What | When | Who maintains it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room book | every room with its attributes | design through operation | planner, then portfolio owner |
| Room schedule | target rooms with target areas, before the design | work stages 1–2 | client, planner |
| Area schedule under DIN 277 | totals per area type and floor plan level | cost planning, evidence | planner |
| CAFM room master data | subset of the room book in the operations system, kept up to date | operation | facility management |
In practice
Eight columns usually suffice for an import: building, floor, room number, designation, use, area, standard, source with revision. Whoever has more maps; whoever has less fills in. The most common error is an area without standard and source – later nobody knows whether 18.4 m² means living area, net room area or the lease figure.
A floor plan yields geometry and room designation; not finishes, fittings, heights or cleaning groups. A room book from plan archives is therefore a skeleton that operations complete – not the reverse.
Normraum relevance
The room book is the output of Normraum: per room, room number, use, area under DIN 277 or WoFlV and confidence, plus the check log with source reference in the as-built plan – as XLSX, CSV and PDF with column mapping for CAFM and ERP imports. What no floor plan carries – floor finishes, fittings, room heights, cleaning groups – the portfolio owner adds in the target system or on site; Normraum supplies the checked area basis.