Jack Noonan

The WELL Building standard has now been adopted by over 70,000 projects across more than 135 countries, and despite all of the international growth, Australia remains as a leading country for adoption since the very first WELL project was Certified in Australia - Mirvac's HQ at 200 George Street in 2017. Since 2017, the WELL Standards have evolved, the programs have expanded, and the evidence-based health interventions that form the basis of the Standard have grown. Much of the growth of the interventions has been due to emerging research and mega trends such as pandemic resilience, the rise of ESG and social sustainability, continuous monitoring, and a greater focus on operational performance.

The WELL Air concept aims to ensure high levels of indoor air quality across a building’s lifetime through diverse strategies that include source elimination or reduction, active and passive building design and operation strategies and human behaviour interventions. This presentation will present the Air concept of the WELL standard in detail - how it is structured, the preconditons and optimisations required for WELL Certification, the pathways for other WELL Ratings such as the WELL Performance Rating, and how industry continues to influence it.

The presentation will also touch on the emerging links between Air and critical ESG considerations, as well as the evidence base showing how investing in better indoor air quality results in better social and economic outcomes (Second Edition of IWBI's Investing in Health Pays Back Report due to release in the coming months). It will include case studies from Asia Pacific and beyond that show how certain WELL features have been implemented in practice.