The International Well Building Institute founded by this former Goldman Sachs partner has developed a standard for healthy buildings that could do for occupant health what LEED has done for sustainability.
You had a successful career on Wall Street when you formed the wellness real estate company Delos and subsequently, the International WELL Building Institute. What led to your interest in healthy buildings?
When I first conceived this concept seven years ago, the green building movement and the words sustainability kept popping up but I didn’t see anyone talking about biological sustainability or focusing exclusively on how these buildings were impacting the people inside of them. While conducting extensive R&D in the fields of health and wellness in the built environment, we quickly realized the need to share this research globally and create a standard focused on human sustainability. Around two years ago, the International WELL Building Institute was established as a public benefit corporate to administer the WELL Building Standard and share it globally.
The WELL Building Standard scores buildings on 102 individual metrics in seven categories: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light Fitness, Comfort and Mind. What’s behind this very broad approach?
Each WELL Building Standard Feature is designed to address issues that impact the health, comfort or knowledge of occupants. Many WELL features intended to improve health are supported by existing government standards or other standards-setting organizations. Some WELL features are intended to change behavior through education and corporate policy or culture. These WELL features are meant to provide information and support for making positive lifestyle choices. These features can be performance-based standards, which allow flexibility in how a project meets acceptable quantified thresholds, or prescriptive standards that require that specific technology, design strategies, or protocols are implemented.
WELL Features are categorized as either Preconditions that are necessary for baseline WELL certification or compliance, or Optimizations or optional enhancements, which together determine the level of certification above baseline certification.
Many WELL components, like mold control and proper ventilation, are widely accepted good-building practices. Others, like posture-supportive flooring and circadian lighting, probably aren’t even on the radar of many builders. How do you convince them that these features are important?
The WELL Building Standard and the programming associated with it is focused on people and impact on building occupants, and that’s something that all of us involved in the built environment should be thinking about. Collectively shifting the focus to a celebration of the ways in which buildings and interior design can serve the people in those structures – who are the fundamental focus and reason those spaces even exist – represents a tremendous opportunity for the building community to bring a new wave of value to clients.
There are a lot of recognizable names attached to Delos and IWBI-Deepak Chopra, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dick Gephardt-along with some better known in sustainable building circles-such a Rick Fedrizzi of USGBC and Jason McLennan of the Living Futures Institute. But who exactly formulated the standard, and was there input from the construction industry?
The WELL Building Standard is the culmination of seven years of research and development in collaboration with leading physicians, scientists and industry professionals. Delos initially pioneered the standard, helping to develop the framework and establish the research behind WELL, but in 2013, Delos founded the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) as a means to share the WELL Building Standard globally.
Prior to the public launch of WELL version 1.0, IWBI conducted a two-year pilot program that helped us refine the standard in terms of how it applies to different building typologies and how we’re translating medical science into building practice. The other critical element to version 1.0 was a three-phase peer review process. It was very important for us to undergo a thorough and transparent expert peer review that engaged with the scientific, practitioner and medical communities in order to get support and buy-in from leading medical experts and industry professionals.
During the scientific review phase, researchers reviewed and responded specifically to performance benchmarks set by the WELL Building Standard, such as air and water contaminants, the relationship between indoor lighting and our circadian rhythm, and mold and other biological contaminants.
The second, practitioner-review phase included engaging with leading science and green building practitioners for further review and refinement of the standard. The final, medical peer review phase was led by Dr. Michael Roizen, chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic, and consisted of a comprehensive medical review of the WELL Building Standard.
In order to guarantee full transparency during this process, we have the full list of all peer reviewers on IWBI’s website and have aggregated comments from the peer review as well as comments on how the WELL Building Standard evolved as a result of this input. This information was published online with the launch of WELL version 1.0 in October 2014, and it is available for download on the IWBI website: WELLcertified.com.
What are the roles of the Living Future Institute and the USGBC in administering and promoting the WELL standard?
The Living Future Institute and USGBC do not play a role in administering WELL. The International WELL Building Institute has a partnership with the Green Building Certification Institute — the same institution responsible for LEED certification — to provide third-party certification for the WELL Building Standard. As a result, this partnership means that projects can use LEED and WELL together without any duplication.
As it relates to the Living Future Institute and USGBC, the WELL Building Standard was designed to work harmoniously with LEED, the Living Building Challenge, and other leading global green building programs.
It took many years for LEED to gain traction in the U.S. Do you see the WELL Building Standard facing the same challenges?
We are fortunate to have a wonderful partnership with the Green Building Certification Institute. Going into this, we knew that having LEED Buildings certified by a third party, GBCI, has been crucial to its worldwide adoption. As a way to accelerate and drive the global adoption of the WELL Building Standard in the same way, we forged a formal collaboration between IWBI and GBCI early on to reinforce the alignment between health, wellness, and sustainability. IWBI’s partnership with GBCI has been extremely important in taking the standard global as GBCI guarantees a best-in-class certification infrastructure that helps make it seamless for professionals and organizations already using LEED.
An individual’s health can be affected by so many factors. Aren’t builders who make health claims opening themselves up to a liability beyond their control?
We don’t make health claims about people’s improved health. We’ve spent years reviewing, analyzing and compiling studies and the latest research on how elements of a building impact people’s health and wellbeing. There’s an extraordinary body of evidence-based research out there that shows the connection in categories like lighting and water and the potential impacts on human health and wellbeing. As a result, we’ve prescribed a certain set of features that we think will be the most impactful for people’s health in the built environment.
With the work that we’ve done, we’ve been able to answer how a building can contribute to health and wellness, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to show if healthier buildings lead to healthier people and if healthier people are more productive. It will take time to build an evidence base to make those linkages for corporations, and we are working with organizations like CBRE who are committed to outcome-oriented research for follow-through and have forged other partnerships that will help to answer those questions more definitively.
We can share that one year after certification, CBRE conducted and published a post-occupancy study with very encouraging findings, such as: 92% of the respondents said that the new space has created a positive effect on their health and wellbeing and 83% of employees feel more productive in the new office space. There is a strong economic and value proposition for WELL certification and we look forward to continuing to strengthen the business case for WELL as more findings are gathered.
How much of a premium does WELL certification add to construction costs? Are there fees associated with certification, as with LEED?
Yes, as with LEED, there are fees associated with certification. In terms of costs, what we’ve found so far is that the total cost to get a project WELL Certified including registration, certification, and WELL commissioning averages less than $100 per employee for a typical commercial office building, which is a very small investment in human capital relative to other fixed costs for employers. The potential benefits are also staggering if you factor considerations like decreased employee sick days, improved employee retention, and increased alertness and productivity, so we feel strongly that the value proposition is very attractive.
How many buildings have been certified, and how many are currently in the process?
Prior to launching version 1.0 of the WELL Building Standard, WELL underwent a two-year pilot program. During that time, several projects achieved WELL Pilot Certification, including CBRE INC’s Global Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles, which is also LEED Gold, and several LYFE Kitchen restaurants in Tarzana, CA, Evanston, IL and Park Meadows, CO. The Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes in Pittsburgh, PA became the first institution worldwide to achieve WELL Platinum Pilot Certification. Currently, there is over 10 million square feet of commercial, institutional and multifamily projects in the US and globally that are registered or certified for the WELL Building Standard.
Prices for the condos built by Delos at 66 East 11th St. in New York range from $4,000 to $5,000 a sq. ft. What does that say about the ability of Delos to bring a healthy living environment to everyone?
Sixty-six East 11th Street is a luxury development in New York City, so the pricing is in line with current New York City real estate prices. It’s not indicative of the cost to bring healthy living environments to everyone.
In fact, while it’s difficult to isolate the cost per rental unit or cost per hotel room to implement our wellness features and designs (and costs will vary based on the project), one of the most exciting things we have learned is that cost premiums can be minimal for installing many of these healthy features into buildings. It’s about healthier choices, not necessarily higher costs.
Will the standard be extended to apply to homes?
WELL version 1.0 is optimized for commercial and institutional projects, but a multifamily pilot is launching in April. New multi-housing projects will be able register online to be part of the pilot program at wellcertified.com. We don’t have a limit on the number of multi-housing developments that can register to be part of the pilot program and are looking forward to receiving registration from a diverse range of projects across various cities, countries and climates. At the moment, there are at least four projects and over one million square feet of new multifamily construction awaiting the formal launch to enroll in the new pilot.
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