SAN DIEGO—Smart-building wellness programs are about employee and tenant comfort, which leads to increased productivity and more profitability for everyone, panelists on Realcomm's Smart Building Wellness webinar told attendees Tuesday. The webinar demonstrated how technology plays a major role in healthy intelligent buildings and best practices for a wellness program.

Moderator Brenna Walraven, president & CEO of Corporate Sustainability Strategies, said we're really only at the beginning of a massive shift in the CRE industry, and we're one of the last industries to be fully disrupted by technology. She explained that the evolution of smart buildings and wellness began with the 1976 outbreak of Legionnaire's disease at Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, which led to I-BEAM—a guidance tool for indoor air-quality issues. This evolved into the development of USGBC and LEED certification. She pointed out that we could use smart building solutions to avoid Legionnaire's disease outbreaks like the one in November at Disneyland, which created the need for two coolers to be shut down at the park.

Walraven also noted that sitting is the new smoking, which has led to the increasing use of stand-up desks. The wellness movement has also encouraged the use of natural lighting in buildings and has stepped up indoor-air-quality control and monitoring. “There's a trend toward moving beyond the absence of sickness to creating environments that offer the opportunity to thrive,” she said, adding that the market is moving toward very specific improvements in smart buildings and wellness.

The eight elements of a smart building are insightful, personalized, green, fluid, healthy, productive, collaborative and effective, said Walraven. A green building produces more energy than the building uses productive, and smart buildings can help promote better company culture.

In looking at the progression of wellness at work, we've gone from more low-tech approach with collaborative and interactive space to fully Wi-Fi-enabled areas, Zen rooms, and other features. We're now getting involved with robust indoor-air and environmental-quality testing and monitoring. This leads to smart building design—not just energy management and lighting, but safety and other new trends. Walraven said smart building amenities will increasingly be part of this landscape, progressing to buildings that can withstand the negative impact of climate change.

David Palin, sustainability manager for Mirvac Property Group in Australia, spoke about healthy building best practices. His presentation, put together with the help of sustainability engineer Dr. Nathan Rosaguti, focused on 200 George St., a 417,000-square-foot, 33-story building in Sydney, also known as the EY Centre and owned by AMP/Mirvac. The center, which houses Mirvac's headquarters, contains, among other features, a Living lab: a network of embedded sensors that are integrated with other building systems (access, SkyPark, lifts, etc.).

Palin said the Australian drivers for smart-wellness programs are tenants; investors; rating tools like Green Star (similar to EnergyStar in the US), NABERS IE and WELL; and industry bodies like Property Council, which has produced a guide to office quality. Indoor air quality, lighting and thermal comfort are the focus of the project's wellness efforts, and Mirvac is able to pull in 1,000 data points to study these areas in the building. He added that rather than HR being the main keepers of this strategy, the health, safety and environment department are its real keepers.

Sara Neff, a SVP with Kilroy Realty Corp., addressed where health is now in CRE in the US, beginning with why health matters to businesses now and how we started caring about it in the business world. A recent study showing the impact of green buildings on cognitive function produced earthshattering results: . levels of pedestrian items such as off-gassing from paints and cleaning chemicals and CO2 have deep impact on cognitive function. “This is something that our tenants are going to care about, so we have to as well.”

Neff said Kilroy's typical tenant is a Millennial in a free address office who is constantly moving around during the workday. That tenant will ask for healthy buildings.

So, what is health? Neff said it started with the gym and moved on from there. Kilroy started by getting a Fitwel certification, which “gave us confidence,” and the firm also achieved its first WELL certification on a residential tower in Hollywood. And then there's LEED, which requires an air-quality test. “This changed the way we view air quality. We were more or less uninterested in, but now we know results of ventilation tests,” said Neff. She added that LEED is now aligned with RESET, a standard of continuous air-quality monitoring—not just once-a-year air-quality test. She is interested in new products that influence that.

“In the future, we will be seeing continuous air-quality monitoring; the field is new, and there are lots of bad products on the market right now,” said Neff. The industry is just figuring out how much we should measure and the costs. Right now, there's a tradeoff between less energy usage and better air quality; hopefully, this will change and the two may be compatible.

Also, now we have to care a lot more about our building materials because of VOCs. “We're dealing with health beyond just air quality,” said Neff, which includes growing food in the firm's buildings via roof gardens. The challenge is that health is still really hard to quantify, so the goal is to make health visible.

Marc Petock, chief communications officer and VP of marketing for Lynxspring, said owners, operators and facilities managers are playing a much bigger role in health, happiness and the active nature of tenants—a job that used to be held by HR. With staff costs covering 50% to 85% of an operational budget, it behooves companies to avoid poor lighting, air quality and other wellness detractors that negatively affect employee health and cost the company more. He added that conversation has changed from being about how much energy is being used to how indoor climate truly affects people's health and productivity.

Facility environment is important, and those involved in the building-development field need to look at overall comfort; air quality, ventilation and circulation; water; sound/acoustic; temperature; lighting; office ambiance; and color. Looking for air contaminants is becoming part of the security protection of a building, but office ambiance and color are new; items such as the effect of plants, what the office looks like and how this contributes to wellness are now coming into focus.

Some of the drivers for these changes include a reset of workplace expectations; new real estate value propositions (occupant-centered versus sustainability); how buildings impact health and well-being; an increase in overall interest in life, health and wellness; and the desire for transparency.

There are barriers to these changes, however, said Petock. Some of these include not yet knowing how to define, measure and achieve results; determining meaningful ROI for occupants and building owners alike; the fact that the measurement of success is not complete and needs more data and metrics; the overall cost, including initial cost investments; and the reluctance on users to change due to fear of failing (one of the biggest barriers).

The value to embarking in a building-wellness program includes increased building and facility asset value due to greater marketability; savings in overall personnel costs due to reduced sick days, increased productivity and increased happiness and satisfaction; and the opportunity for better recruitment.

Petock recommends initiating a wellness program only if it is part of a broader workforce strategy and business plan; if it is integrated across companywide departments; and if it is versatile and data driven.

Aliza Skolnik, VP with Environmental Systems Design Inc., said 90% of our time is spent indoors, and you want to focus on what makes the most impact on bottom line: people. She added that 90% of employee-related expenses go to salary and benefits, so you need to focus on employee satisfaction. According to Harvard's COGx Study, participants' cognitive performance scores averaged 101% higher in green buildings with enhanced ventilation compared to those in conventional buildings, and Skolnik said ESD has seen productivity improvement of 8% to 11% in buildings with improved air quality.

Skolnick went over the differences among three different well-building certifications: WELL, Fitwel and RESET. The WELL rating system includes 100 features divided into seven categories: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind. There is also optimization for buildings to earn extra points. WELL can be applied to new or existing buildings, but is most easily applied to new buildings or those undergoing renovation. There is also an onsite verification piece to this—rigor. Of the three certifications, WELL has the highest cost

Fitwel, a health and wellness rating, has 63 strategies divided into 12 categories, said Skolnik. It's similar to WELL, but focuses on stairwells, entrances and location. Some of the key differentiators between Fitwel and WELL: Fitwel has no mandatory strategies; buildings are rated on the ones you attempt, and get a one-, two or three-star rating. Fitwel is most easily applied to existing buildings or a portfolio of buildings and is the least expensive of the three systems.

RESET solely focuses on air quality. Building management is required to monitor and track five parameters, and if they are acceptable for 90 days, the building can earn a certification.

All of the programs are meant to help move the needle and maintain the intent of wellness, as well as keep the conversation going, said Skolnik. There is market demand for environments that are responsive to people, not only optimizing the building, but also the personal well-being of the occupants.

Mark Roush, lighting application center faculty at Philips, said LEED has driven real estate value; he is hoping the same for WELL. WELL Lighting certification features are based on precondition (mandatory) and track visual lighting design, circadian lighting design, electric light glare control and solar glare control. The WELL Building Standard for Light provides illumination guidelines that are aimed, among other things, to minimize disruption to the body's circadian system, enhance productivity and support good sleep quality.

Chris Phillips, global strategic accounts manager for Iconics, said technology in the building space is all about catching information to provide insights about your building. The goal is to reduce energy cost and consumption, but we're challenged because we're constantly building new buildings. Therefore, we really need to up the technology to help management achieve its goals. He quoted Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum, Davos: “We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another.”

Philips emphasized, “It's important to know how your building is working today and how it will work tomorrow.” He added that disruptive technology is at the spearhead of where this is going, and more comfort for employees leads to increased productivity.

Neff said Kilroy's typical tenant is a Millennial in a free address office who is constantly moving around during the workday. That tenant will ask for healthy buildings.

RESET solely focuses on air quality. Building management is required to monitor and track five parameters, and if they are acceptable for 90 days, the building can earn a certification.

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