biology

WELL Building Standard

WELL Building Standard is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand WELL Building Standard rather than just read about it. In short: WELL Building Standard (WELL) is a healthy building certification program, developed by the International WELL Building Institute PCB (IWBI), a California registered public benefit corporation. History The WELL Building Standard was launched in 2014 by Paul Scialla of Delos company, becoming the first well-being focused standard.

Key takeaways

WELL Building Standard belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect WELL Building Standard to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of WELL Building Standard from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

WELL Building Standard (WELL) is a healthy building certification program, developed by the International WELL Building Institute PCB (IWBI), a California registered public benefit corporation.

History The WELL Building Standard was launched in 2014 by Paul Scialla of Delos company, becoming the first well-being focused standard. By 2016, over 200 projects in 21 countries adopted the certification. In 2014, Green Business Certification Inc. began to provide third-party certification for WELL. By 2024, WELL says that it is being used across more than 5 billion square feet of space in 130 countries, supporting an estimated 25 million occupants in nearly 74,000 commercial and residential locations.

Performance Scientific research provides information about the standard's performance. Existing research focuses on the evaluation of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters. The certification requires post-occupancy evaluation, which allows occupants to provide feedback to building owners and management on these IEQ parameters. For buildings with 10 or more occupants, the Occupant Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Survey from the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley (or an approved alternative) is completed by a representative sample of at least 30% of occupants at least once per year. The survey covers the following topics: acoustics, thermal comfort, furnishings, workspace light levels and quality, odors and air quality, cleanliness and maintenance, and layout. In 2020, researchers analyzed 1,121 post-occupancy evaluation surveys conducted in nine offices, two WELL-certified and seven not WELL-certified. Results of the study were mixed, with higher occupant satisfaction in the WELL-certified buildings for spatial comfort, thermal comfort, noise and privacy, personal control, and workspace comfort, but lower satisfaction for visual comfort and connection to the outside in comparison with non-WELL certified buildings. These findings may be attributable to the types of non-WELL certified buildings used in the comparison, as they may already be high-performance buildings in other regards which do not necessarily satisfy all of the WELL certification's criteria. In 2021, another study on surveys compared the results of three rounds of occupant IEQ satisfaction surveys reported by three groups of employees who moved from three non-WELL (two BREEAM and one non-certified) to three WELL-certified office buildings. For two out of the three building pairs, there was a statistically significant increase in building and workspace satisfaction after relocation to WELL buildings. However, for 55% of certification parameters for the three compared cases, there was an insignificant difference upon relocation. Results found higher occupant satisfaction for building cleanliness and furniture but no increase in satisfaction with noise and visual comfort. Another 2021 study investigated indoor air quality (IAQ) before and after relocation to WELL-certified office buildings. The results indicated there was no significant concentration difference for the majority of measured air pollutants between non-WELL and WELL buildings. In 2022, researchers conducted a pre- versus post-occupancy evaluation of approximately 1,300 workers transitioning to WELL-certified offices from non-WELL certified offices. Using pre- and post-occupancy surveys, overall satisfaction rates improved from 42% (pre-occupancy) to 70% (post-occupancy) across all parameters. The largest increases in satisfaction were for cleanliness and access to nature, while occupants were most satisfied with maintenance and lighting in WELL-certified offices. In 2023, researchers analyzed 1,403 post-occupancy evaluation surveys from 14 open-plan offices (10 of which were WELL-certified and four of which were uncertified) in Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. The five offices that achieved the highest satisfaction in interior design, indoor air quality, privacy and connection to the outdoor environment were WELL-certified. No significant differences in health were found between WELL-certified and non-WELL certified buildings as quantified by questions about physical and mental health presented in the post-occupancy evaluation surveys. In 2024, researchers used a statistical matching approach to compare occupant satisfaction from 3,268 surveys from 20 WELL-certified and 49 LEED-certified buildings. Overall building and workplace satisfaction was found to be high in WELL-certified buildings (94% and 87%). Statistical analysis revealed that there is a 39% higher probability of finding an occupant that is satisfied with the building overall in a WELL-certified building than a LEED-certified building. Although satisfaction was found to be higher in WELL-certified buildings, satisfaction in LEED-certified buildings with the building, workspace, and most IEQ parameters was still relatively high. Temperature and sound privacy in LEED-certified buildings are the only parameters with mean satisfaction values less than "neutral" amongst all studied parameters in LEED- and WELL-certified buildings.

Principles & concepts

WELL v2 met best practices on four tenets: evidence-based, verifiable, implementable, and feedback-focused. The principles in WELL v2 are equitable, global, evidence-based, technically robust, customer-focused, and resilient. WELL is a performance-based system which Performance Verification is completed by an authorized WELL Performance Testing Agent.

Certification

There are two types of certifications, the WELL Certification for Owner-occupied and the WELL Core Certification. The WELL Core is for the building that provide tenant occupation more than 75%, and not needed to achieve minimum points from every subjects. The WELL Silver, Gold, and Platinum level must achieve at least 1, 2, and 3 points per subject, but the WELL Bronze has no minimum points' rule. For WELL core, there are no minimum point. The optimization point requirement from the WELL Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum are ranging from 40, 50, 60, and 80 points. The rating system limits 12 points per subject, except the Innovation which limit under 10 points. Total points must not be over 100.

Assessment

The WELL certificated buildings must pass all precondition requirements and they could get optimization points available from extension subjects.

Air

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with WELL Building Standard

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what WELL Building Standard claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to WELL Building Standard before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about WELL Building Standard ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of WELL Building Standard

In research: WELL Building Standard appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses WELL Building Standard in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: WELL Building Standard is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Building biology, Building engineering, Environment of the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for WELL Building Standard outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study WELL Building Standard in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what WELL Building Standard means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain WELL Building Standard out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is WELL Building Standard in simple terms?

WELL Building Standard (WELL) is a healthy building certification program, developed by the International WELL Building Institute PCB (IWBI), a California registered public benefit corporation. History The WELL Building Standard was launched in 2014 by Paul Scialla of Delos company, becoming the fi…

Why does WELL Building Standard matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study WELL Building Standard?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on WELL Building Standard.