Green Synergies

While LEED is by far the best-known sustainable rating system on the market today, it has competitors. Some systems, like the Living Building Challenge, cover a similar holistic spectrum of requirements; others, like Passive House or SITES, focus on a smaller range of factors such as energy efficiency or eco-friendly site development. WELL, or the WELL Building Standard version 2 (WELL v2), acts as a complement to LEED and other holistic systems by focusing on the health and well-being of building occupants.

Concept

The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which created and now develops the WELL standard, describes WELL as “a vehicle for buildings and organizations to deliver more thoughtful and intentional spaces that enhance human health and well-being.” WELL aims to support human health and well-being through the design and operation of human-centric buildings around the globe, based on the latest research and backed up by a rigorous testing program to verify performance. To achieve this, WELL is built on the following principles:

• Equitable: projects should benefit a diverse range of users, including the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
• Global: strategies should be applicable across the world.
• Evidence-Based: approaches should be based on multi-disciplinary research.
• Technically Robust: verify results through rigorous third-party testing.
• Customer-Focused: make WELL easy to use and responsive.
• Resilient: continuously improve and integrate new information.

Background

The IWBI launched WELL v1 in 2014, followed by the WELL v2’s pilot in 2018 and ratification in 2020. Currently, more than 74,000 commercial and residential locations participate in WELL in some way, totaling 5.9 billion square feet in 137 countries. Of these, more than 22,000 locations have been certified and rated, and 18,000 more are enrolled, totaling 4.5 billion square feet in 126 countries, including over a hundred Fortune 500 companies. WELL has become a significant and valuable player in the world of sustainable design, construction and operations over its short history.

Organization

Like LEED, WELL evaluates projects for compliance with both prerequisites and credits (“preconditions” and “optimizations” in WELL’s terminology). Projects must comply with all 24 mandatory preconditions to be considered for certification and may earn up to 110 points contained in 102 optimizations. Projects can be certified at four certification levels: Bronze (40 points), Silver (50 points), Gold (60 points) and Platinum (80 points).

Preconditions and optimizations are divided among 10 core credit categories (plus an extra credit Innovation category) which reflect different aspects of the built environment’s contribution to human health and well-being. Projects may earn no more than 12 points per concept, encouraging teams to adopt a holistic approach to compliance:

• Air: achieve high levels of indoor air quality through the reduction of air contaminant sources and by improved ventilation, leading to better occupant health, happiness and productivity.
• Water: improve drinking water quality, protect drinking water from contaminants and protect building materials from water damage in order to ensure sanitation and hygiene.
• Nourishment: create an environment in which healthy eating is the easiest choice by making healthy food like fruits and vegetables easily available and encouraging nutritional transparency.
• Light: ensure good lighting quality to promote psychological and biological health in building users.
• Movement: promote physical activity through building design and discourage unhealthy sedentary practices.
• Thermal Comfort: support productivity by providing the maximum level of thermal comfort through improved HVAC design capable of meeting individual preferences.
• Sound: increase acoustic comfort by eliminating sources of annoyance that decrease productivity and support concentration through good environmental design.
• Materials: reduce human exposure to toxic chemicals throughout the building lifecycle.
• Mind: support mental health and human well-being through building design and operational policies.
• Community: build a healthy culture that accommodates diverse needs and establishes an engaged community.
• Innovation: develop unique strategies for improving human health and well-being.

Performance-Based

WELL relies on on-site testing and verification from its Performance Testing Agents, who test air quality, water quality, acoustics, and other requirements necessary for meeting preconditions and optimizations.

Project Types

WELL projects fall into two categories determined by ownership type:

• Owner-occupied projects are mostly occupied by the project owner; regular occupants (i.e. employees) are affiliated with the owner.
• WELL Core projects are mostly occupied by tenants; the project owner only occupies a small portion of the project area. These are core-and-shell projects.

Owner-occupied and Core projects have different points requirements, reflecting the different levels of control the project owner has over WELL standards within the building.

IWBI also offers WELL Score, a metric for entire organizations: average number of points across projects owned by organization, weighted by occupants at each location.

Synergies with LEED

WELL synergizes well with LEED, offering numerous “Crosswalks” between the two standards which allow project teams to achieve points in one system if they achieve points in the other. See this resource from USGBC for more information on these productive and time-saving synergies.

Conclusion

WELL offers building owners a significant return on investment, which may be why the standard has been and continues to be so widely adopted. In addition to supporting the owner’s sustainability goals and improving real estate values, WELL has been proven to improve occupant health and well-being while boosting productivity. A peer-reviewed study of more than 1300 WELL Certified spaces published in Building and Environment demonstrated that WELL Certified spaces improved occupant satisfaction by 30%, well-being by 26%, mental health by 10% and productivity by 10 points. Organizations from IBM, Netflix, Citi and Deloitte to Hilton and the Four Seasons have chosen WELL to add value to their brand.

WELL offers a rigorous approach to ensuring the health and wellbeing of building occupants and realizing the benefits of happier workers, customers, guests and visitors. More tailored to user experience than LEED or other holistic sustainable rating systems, WELL is an effective choice to improve and verify healthy buildings.

(See this overview from IWBI for more details on WELL v2.)

Thanks for reading! Please like this post if you enjoyed the content, comment if you have any questions, and consider subscribing to this blog for future posts.