Incorporating health and wellness into commercial buildings has entered into the fast lane, according to a recent announcement by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). This past Monday, during the opening session of the WELL Summit, the organization announced the launch of the WELL Performance Rating, a new rating that recognizes building owners and operators for performance and excellence through healthy building initiatives.
“The WELL Performance Rating puts us on an accelerated path to make buildings smarter for human health, unlocking the use of new technologies and more intelligent approaches to improve and enhance well-being and performance,” said Rachel Hodgdon, President and CEO, IWBI. “Thanks to the contributions of our collaborators from across the globe, the rating will connect building performance with the experience of the people inside, allowing organizations to make actionable what was once invisible through data and occupant insights.”
Developed collaboratively with industry leaders in smart building technologies and combined with input from the IWBI Performance Advisory, WELL Performance Testing Organizations (PTOs) and WELL Enterprise Providers (EPs), the rating provides a roadmap for organizations targeting occupant experience and building performance across key indoor environmental quality (IEQ) indicators. These include air quality, water quality, thermal comfort, acoustics and lighting.
According to IWBI, the rating allows organizations to garner intelligence to drive better business performance and strengthen organizational culture through the use of sensor networks, onsite test and surveys assessing employee perception of health, wellbeing and performance.
“The creation of this rating has been a deeply collaborative effort,” Hodgdon added. “The top players in the industry united around a common set of performance thresholds for healthy buildings and best practices for continuous monitoring through the installation of sensor networks to advance human health and experience.”
Healthy Building Leaders Join the New Rating
During the announcement at the summit, leaders from Cyclone Energy Group, Delos, EY, Honeywell, StrongLED Smart Lighting, View and WELL Living Lab China joined Hodgdon on stage to signal their commitments to be among the first to pursue the WELL Performance Rating.
Demonstrating a commitment to optimizing the health of the people inside the buildings, the following organizations have enrolled in the WELL Performance Rating:
- Cyclone Energy Group
- Delos
- Environmental Charter School (ECS)
- Edge Technologies
- Ernst & Young (EY)
- Ethos Engineering
- GreenJump Sustainability
- Honeywell
- International Commerce Centre (ICC)
- Laguna
- Nucleus Office Park
- StrongLED Smart Lighting
- View Inc.
- WELL Living Lab Beijing
More Information of the WELL Performance Rating
IWBI notes that the WELL Performance Rating can be earned as a standalone to the current WELL Building Standard or as a milestone towards a single-building certification/enterprise commitment. While drawing from many of the pre-existing WELL standards, the WELL Performance Rating features also call for specific leadership thresholds in addition to introducing new strategies.
In developing the new rating back in 2021, IWBI states that it tapped into the expertise of a global network of advisors as well as a diverse group of organizational and industry leaders, including Aircuity, BSI, Carrier, CETEC, Cognian Technologies, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Kaiterra, LeGrand, Lennox International, Panasonic, Schneider Electric, SGS, Thornton Tomasetti, Trane Technologies and WSP.
Since 2021, IWBI has engaged stakeholders in a series of sessions to further the integrity and use of the rating, including educating individuals on how the rating works and what to prepare for. In March, IWBI’s Governance Council, the leadership body tasked with upholding the integrity of WELL through rigorous standard development criteria, ratified the rating in a unanimous vote.
The Governance Council includes public health icons such as Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey of the University of Pennsylvania and former President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the 17th U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona; and Nancy Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America.
