by Brianna Crandall — October 24, 2014—The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) launched the groundbreaking WELL Building Standard Version 1.0 on October 20 at the inaugural WELL Building Symposium in New Orleans. The WELL Building Standard is said to be the world’s first building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and well-being through the built environment. Following a two-year pilot program and a formal peer review process, the WELL Building Standard is now publicly available from the IWBI Web site.
“The public release of the WELL Building Standard v1.0 marks a momentous step forward in our efforts to bring health and wellness into the indoor environments where we spend more than 90 percent of our time,” said IWBI Founder Paul Scialla. “Through the launch of WELL v1.0, we are creating a clear intersection for the wellness, sustainability, and real estate communities to come together to support human health through the built environment globally.”
Created through seven years of rigorous research and development working with leading physicians, scientists, and industry professionals, the WELL Building Standard is a performance-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring features of the built environment that impact the health and well-being of the people who live, work, and learn in them. The system marries best practices in design and construction with evidence-based medical and scientific research — harnessing the built environment as a vehicle to support human health and well-being.
Pioneered by Delos, WELL v1.0 sets performance requirements in seven categories relevant to occupant health and well-being: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. The WELL Building Standard v1.0 is optimized for commercial and institutional buildings and can be applied to new construction and major renovations, tenant improvements, and core and shell developments, notes IWBI. On-site post-occupancy commissioning of features including air and water quality is required for WELL certification, and re-commissioning every three years is required to maintain certification.
Administered by IWBI, the WELL Building Standard is third-party certified through IWBI’s collaboration with the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), which administers 10+ billion square feet of LEED buildings and the 190,000+ person LEED AP program globally, ensuring that WELL works seamlessly with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification program.
“Our mission is to bring human health to the forefront of building practices and reinvent buildings so they are not only better for the environment, but also for the people in them,” said IWBI Senior Vice President Michelle Moore. “It’s an important point of inflection for our market and our movement. Historically, sustainability has focused on the impact that buildings have on our climate and environment. Bringing wellness into the conversation adds a new emphasis on the individual, and opens up the field for research and development.”
V1.0 of the WELL Building Standard underwent a thorough and transparent peer review process at the conclusion of its two-year pilot program. The three review phases—a scientific, practitioner, and medical review—responded specifically to WELL performance benchmarks such as air and water contaminants, the relationship between indoor lighting and circadian rhythm, and mold and other biological contaminants. In alignment with IWBI’s commitment to transparency, aggregated comments will be published online.
To date, approximately 5 million square feet of commercial, institutional, and multifamily real estate has been registered for certification through WELL. Certified projects under the pilot program include CBRE Group’s new Global Corporate Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, which is the first commercial office building in the world to be both LEED Gold and WELL Pilot Certified, and the William Jefferson Clinton Children’s Center and orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which will be LEED Platinum Certified and is pursuing WELL Pilot Certification. Other certified projects include the Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes in Pittsburgh, PA, and LYFE Kitchen restaurants in Tarzana, CA; Chicago, IL; and Denver, CO.
