The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) recently announced the launch of its WELL Health-Safety Rating designed for all building and facility types. It is a third-party, evidence-based verified rating system focusing on operational policies, maintenance protocols and design strategies to address a post-COVID-19 world. Additionally, this rating is one the earliest outcomes of IWBI’s Task Force on COVID-19, a group of nearly 600 people, consisting of public health experts, government officials, designers, building scientists, architects and more.
The WELL Health-Safety Rating provides a centralized source and governing body to validate efforts made by owners and operators. It draws on expertise and insight from the IWBI COVID-19 Task Force, World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services pursuant to the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), leading academic and research institutes and the existing WELL Building Standard. Participation in this program requires submission of policies, protocols and strategies for third-party document review and annual verification.
“The WELL Health-Safety Rating is a sign of confidence that measures have been enacted to help support the health and safety of people entering spaces of all kinds, and that those measures have been mapped to scientific evidence and verified through a third-party review process,” said Rick Fedrizzi, chairman & CEO of IWBI, in the release. “By drawing on the proven strategies in WELL, we’re working from the best science available and that’s more important than it’s ever been.”
The new rating will accept registrations in June from all types of buildings and facility typologies. Current WELL-registered projects and WELL Portfolio participants can earn the WELL Health-Safety Rating as part of their already established certification efforts.
“Our buildings and the people who tend them are our first line of defense for keeping us safe and healthy,” said Rachel Gutter, president of IWBI, in the release, “and the current pandemic has confirmed that health is a material economic consideration of the first order. These two simple truths stand at the nexus of our work to date and will, along with the hard evidence that is mounting, inform all our decisions about the critical need for better buildings, more vibrant communities and stronger organizations going forward.”
To learn more about this new WELL rating, read the original press release.