WELL Building Standard & WELL Certification

Create healthy and productive spaces for your people with our services to help you implement the WELL Building Standard in the built environment.

What is WELL Standard?

The WELL Building Standard transforms how employers view buildings, emphasising the profound impact of design, operations, and behaviours on our health and well-being in various environments. This comprehensive approach, managed by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), aims to enhance human health through the built environment, providing guidelines to optimise spaces for a healthier workplace.

With people spending an average of 90% of their time indoors, the quality of buildings significantly affects their health, productivity, and overall well-being. The WELL Building Standard introduces a performance-based certification system that addresses key aspects such as air quality, natural light, and amenities, offering a framework to integrate human sustainability into architectural design and create spaces conducive to health and wellness.

Embracing the WELL Building Standard brings a myriad of benefits, from attracting and retaining talent to enhancing employee performance and overall satisfaction, it applies to new and existing buildings, interiors, and shell structures, with 41 pre-conditions and 59 optimisations for maximum effect in buildings where the owner occupies 90% of the floor area. While primarily for commercial and institutional offices, other spaces can benefit too such as multi residential, retail, education etc.

If you're interested in implementing these principles in your workplace or commercial building project, we're eager to collaborate with you to achieve your objectives and witness tangible improvements in the success of your project.

Talk to our experts

Kerry Moulds

Sustainability Business Development Manager

kerry.moulds@socotec.co.uk 07779 131647

Get in touch with our Sustainability team

putting health and well-being at the centre of design and construction decisions

WELL Building Standard

The WELL Building Standard is a performance-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring features of the built environment that impact human health and well-being. It focuses on aspects like air quality, water quality, nourishment, fitness, and comfort in buildings. WELL certification promotes healthier and more sustainable spaces.

WELL Building Standard puts health and well-being at the centre of design and construction decisions. A great emphasis is given on strategies aimed at enhancing people’s health and wellbeing in buildings without neglecting the building sustainability performance and the impact on the environment.

Best practices in design and construction are coupled with robust evidence-based medical and scientific research – harnessing the built environment as a vehicle to support human health and wellbeing.

DESIGNED TO ELEVATE HUMAN HEALTH AND WELL-BEING IN THE DESIGN AND OPERATION OF BUILDINGS

WELL V2

WELL Building Standard v2 is a voluntary certification scheme that operates on a points-based system developed by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), designed to elevate human health and well-being in the design and operation of buildings. This standard offers an evidence-based framework to enhance wellness features in both residential and commercial spaces.

Project teams can pursue no more than 12 points per concept and no more than 100 points total across the ten concepts. 10 additional points are available in the Innovation concept (innovative credits). WELL v2 consolidates previous iterations and pilots into a single rating system designed to accommodate all project types and sectors. The system is intended to grow in specificity and specialty over time, adapting to accommodate diverse project types and geographies and in response to new evidence and ever-evolving public health imperatives.

WELL v2 consolidates previous iterations and pilots into a single rating system that is designed to accommodate all project types and sectors. The system is intended to grow in specificity and specialty over time, adapting to accommodate diverse project types and geographies and in response to new evidence and ever-evolving public health imperatives.

WELL V2 is founded on the following Principles:

Equitable

Aims to benefit a variety of people, including and especially disadvantaged or vulnerable populations.

Global

Proposes interventions that are feasible, achievable and relevant across many applications throughout the world.

Evidence-based

Draws upon a diverse and rigorous body of research across varying disciplines, validated by a collaborative body of experts, including IWBI advisors.

Technically robust

Defines industry best practice and validates strategies through performance verification and a rigorous third-party verification process.

Customer-focused

Sponsors the success of WELL users through dedicated coaching services, dynamic resources and an intuitive platform for navigating the journey.

Resilient

Keeps pace with advances in research, science, technology and society, continuously improving by integrating new findings.

WELL Building Standard Concepts

WELL Certification Process

Buildings can be awarded WELL certification with Silver, Gold, or Platinum rating (with Platinum being the highest achievement). WELL-certified buildings require recertification every 3 years.
Projects must achieve all preconditions as well as a certain number of points to earn different levels of certification:

Learn More

The Healthy Building Standard, commonly known as the WELL Building Standard, is a globally recognized certification system dedicated to prioritizing human health and wellbeing in the design, operations, and utilization of buildings. This performance-based system measures, certifies, and monitors the features of a built environment that directly impact human health and wellbeing. These key categories include air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind.

This standard goes beyond basic health and safety requirements, encouraging the creation of spaces that actively promote health and wellbeing. The focus is not just on reducing harm but on enhancing the overall human experience within the built environment.

Administered by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), this standard is rooted in an evidence-based approach supported by the latest scientific research. The strategies adopted are designed to advance human health through thoughtful design interventions and other measures, ensuring spaces are conducive to the wellbeing of their occupants.

The WELL Building Standard represents a commitment to prioritizing human health and wellness in the built environments where we live, work, and learn. It stands for the belief that buildings should be designed and operated in ways that enhance the health and wellbeing of the occupants. This standard applies the latest scientific research to define a set of performance metrics and design strategies that can create healthier indoor environments.

The standard also stands for a rigorous process of measurement, certification, and monitoring. Buildings seeking WELL certification undergo extensive performance testing to verify that they meet all the required standards. This ensures that the wellness strategies implemented in the design and operation of the building are not just theoretical, but have a measurable impact on the health and wellbeing of the occupants.

Ultimately, the WELL Building Standard stands for a holistic, people-centric approach to building design and operation. It is about creating spaces that actively support our health and wellbeing, and contribute to a better quality of life.

The WELL Building Standard uses a scoring system to evaluate and grade projects. Every aspect of the project is assessed independently on a numerical scale. This concept-by-concept analysis ensures all Preconditions for each concept are met. The final WELL Score, a number between 0 and 100, is calculated based on the total Preconditions and Optimizations achieved.

Lower scores (0 – 4) represent the compulsory Precondition features. A score less than 5 means the project failed to meet the Preconditions, resulting in non-compliance or non-certification.
Silver scores (5 – 6) indicate that all compulsory Precondition features for that concept have been met.
Higher scores (60 for Gold, 80 for Platinum) signify that a property has achieved all the pre-required features and a number of optimization goals.

The WELL Score offers a comprehensive overview of a building’s commitment to health and wellbeing.

Employers spend 90 percent of their annual operating costs on people. This means that even a small impact on productivity, engagement, and satisfaction in the workplace can have huge returns on investments. Given our breadth of experience, we can guide teams through a broad range of scenarios including new construction, building fit-outs, and existing building upgrades.