Just about everyone in the commercial real estate industry is familiar with the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Certification, which has become the gold standard when it comes to green building certification programs.

There’s a new sustainability standard, however, that puts the focus on a building’s occupants, as opposed to LEED’s focus on reducing environmental impact.

That standard is known as the WELL Building Standard, and Lauren Wallace, a LEED project reviewer and a WELL accredited professional, will headline the afternoon session at the 16th annual Alabama Commercial Real Estate Conference & Expo on Jan. 29 and elaborate on the new construction standard and its importance in Alabama.

The Alabama Center for Real Estate hosts the conference in Birmingham each year. To learn more about the conference, click here.

For a full list of ACREcon speakers, click here. 

To register for ACREcon 2016, click here. 

Lauren Wallace

Wallace is the certifications department manager at Epsten Group, where she trains and manages leaders in sustainability and consults on thousands of projects in over 50 countries.

Wallace is the LBC facilitator for the Atlanta Living Building Challenge Collaborative.

We recently caught up with Wallace, and she discussed the importance of the new WELL Building Standard and its potential impact on Alabama.

ACRE: Our contractors, and other companies, are very well aware of the LEED Certification. In a couple of sentences can you sum up what separates WELL from LEED?

Wallace: Where LEED focuses on reducing the impact a building has on the environment, the WELL Building Standard is the first rating system that focuses on the occupants of the building. In addition, the WELL Building Standard is a performance-based rating system: The building must actually perform to the requirements outlined in the standard, whereas LEED Certification is considered a snapshot in time.

There are many companies out there that have already integrated components of the WELL Building Standard into their offices or homes, but this is the first time that all of these ideas have been brought together. The future of benchmarking how the space that you work, live or play in actually improves your productivity and health is here, and it is really exciting. What is even more exciting is that the two rating systems actually play off of one another very well, as some concepts of the WELL Standard are taken from both LEED and the Living Building Challenge.

ACRE: WELL obviously has a focus on health and well-being. Why has this focus been brought to the forefront and how will it affect construction and employers moving forward?

Wallace: Over 90 percent of our time is spent indoors, so asking questions about how our buildings impact our health and well-being was a natural progression. For employers, an average of 92 percent of the total cost of running or owning a company goes directly towards employee salaries and benefits – not the energy and water use we’ve been so focused on in the LEED rating system. Once all of these factors are considered, the return on investing in the health and well-being of the building occupants is very clear. This standard has a heavy focus on operations and behavior, so very little will change when it comes to the construction aspect. There may be additional water filtration, air filtration, or an emphasis on materials health that the construction industry will experience.

ACRE: Can you provide some examples of what a WELL certified project would look like?

Wallace: WELL certified projects are open and airy with lots of natural daylight. There are elements of nature and culture incorporated into the design of a space, which makes the idea of a blank beige or gray box obsolete. WELL certified projects have grand staircases and activity-based workstations, so the image of a sea of cubicles within an office environment will be a thing of the past.

ACRE: ACRE will have many of Alabama’s top contractors in the audience. How will this topic impact their decision-making moving forward?

Wallace: Projects registered and certified through the WELL Building Standard include more than 20 million square feet of commercial, institutional and multifamily projects in the U.S. and globally. When the RFP for the first WELL project in Alabama is posted, these contractors will want to be able to say a) we know about the WELL Building Standard b) we know what it takes to build a project that will perform to the WELL rating system requirements and c) we believe in the mission of the project as a whole.

To read more about the WELL Building Standard, click here. 

The Alabama Center for Real Estate‘s core purpose is to advance the real estate industry in Alabama by providing relevant resources in the areas of research, education and outreach.