by Brianna Crandall — June 12, 2015—Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) and the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) have just announced a new agreement to promote and advance the WELL Building Standard (WELL) in Canada, a move that is expected to improve the health and wellbeing of building occupants across the nation. Health and wellness in the workplace is increasingly recognized as an important element in attracting and retaining employees, points out CaGBC.
The WELL Building Standard is a performance-based system for measuring, certifying and monitoring features that impact human health and wellbeing, through air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind. It complements other green building rating systems such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
Grounded in a body of medical research that explores the connection between the buildings where we spend more than 90 percent of our time and the health and wellness of the people in them, WELL measures attributes of the built environment by looking at seven Concepts and over 100 Features that address behavior, design and operations.
WELL certification allows building owners and employers to know their space is performing as intended to support human health and wellness. WELL can be applied across all building types and is currently optimized for commercial and institutional projects. WELL is administered by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) and is third-party certified by GBCI.
The new agreement between GBCI and the CaGBC will bolster the adoption of WELL in Canada by aligning the business and administrative processes used to implement WELL in the USA with the demands of the Canadian market. The CaGBC has a longstanding relationship with both USGBC and GBCI, the certification body for USGBC’s LEED green building program, partnering to deliver LEED in Canada. To date, there are more than 5,300 LEED projects in Canada, amounting to more than 79 million gross square meters of space, making Canada the top producer of LEED projects outside of the USA.
IWBI sees the agreement as a “tremendous opportunity” for the wellness, sustainability and real estate communities in Canada to come together to support human health through the built environment. As GBCI aims to introduce WELL in markets spanning the globe, CaGBC will provide additional capacity and support in one of the most important and promising arenas for high-performance building development.
