Green building & healthy building certifications: all you need to know

In this article, we seek to discuss the four most popular certifications around the world: WELL, LEED,  BREEAM, and FITWEL. We'll highlight their most important characteristics and differences, and help you choose the most effective one for your business. 

Let's jump straight into it!

                                  WELL                             

The WELL Building Standard is one of the most popular certifications and can be used in a variety of settings: whole building, partial building, or leased spaces. It was created back in 2004 by the International WELL Building Insitute, and is now present in over 36.000 locations, around 120 countries, and covering over 4 billion square feet.

The core concepts

With human health and well-being as the main focus, the WELL certification aims to improve how people work, live, and operate inside buildings. This is done by following a scoring system based on several preconditions and the following 10 core concepts as a holistic baseline:

The scoring system

Buildings and projects need to fulfill the set preconditions for each concept and meet a certain number of points across all 10 core concepts. The total score across all concepts will determine which level of the WELL certification the project gets: Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. This requires strategic planning of building requirements and implementation of the right equipment.

Here, you can find the different levels available and the required scores for each level:  

Projects are only allowed to aim for a maximum of 12 points per concept and a total of 100 points across all 10 concepts. However, some concepts have 20+ points available, so you need to be careful about deciding which concepts and optimizations best support your project’s goal.

If you’re wondering how these points are calculated, this is done by on-site testing of the building's performance. For this, an authorized WELL Performance Testing Agent spends between one and three days at the building, measuring various air and water quality parameters, as well as sound and light levels.  

Pricing and frequency

All in all, the costs for WELL can very much vary depending on the size of the project, ranging from $15.500 up to $107.000. The recertification of the building needs to be conducted every three years, in order to ensure that buildings keep operating in line with WELL's standards.  

For whom is the WELL certificate the best option? 

WELL offers the most rigorous evaluation of all individual spaces, assuring that the building offers the healthiest possible level for its occupants. Therefore, it is a great option for businesses that are looking to have a deeper assessment and reconstruction of the building.   

Additionally, businesses benefit the most from WELL when including it in the design or re-design process of the buildings. 

WELL and Indoor Air Quality

In order to be certified under the WELL Building Standard, a building must meet certain indoor air quality requirements and ensure that the air quality is safe and healthy for the building's occupants. 

Additionally, WELL gives special importance to the well-being and comfort of the building occupants, which means that the indoor air should, of course, be free of contaminants that can harm human health, but it should also offer a high degree of thermal comfort in order to meet WELL's requirements and pre-conditions.

However, this is extremely difficult to achieve, as it requires highly human-focused indoor air measurements on top of the standard parameters of CO2, particulate matter (PM), temperature, and VOCs.

Lucky for you, extremely difficult does not mean impossible. Our Clairify sensors measure not only the standard air quality core concepts, but also the additional prescribed parameters, such as aerosols, radiant temperature, and thermal comfort, allowing us to "perceive" the indoor air the same way a human being would. 

With this in mind, we can help you obtain up to 22%* of the required points for reaching a WELL certification for your building. Is your building already WELL Silver certified? In that case, we can help you achieve the additional required points to reach the next level: WELL Gold certification.

Are you curious how? Check it with our calculator!

                              LEED                             

LEED centers primarily around building infrastructure and was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. This certification focuses more on the “green” side of the building, taking a holistic approach to evaluate criteria like energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environment quality, and CO2 emissions reduction.   

LEED is applicable to all building types at all building stages and offers a number of tools on its website to understand the evaluated criteria and the scorecard calculations. 

The scoring system

LEED does require buildings to fulfill a number of preconditions before starting the certification process. After that, the rest of the registration process occurs online.

During the certification process, buildings will be evaluated and scored across 9 different categories and will be able to reach a maximum of 100 points.  

Depending on the number of points scored, buildings will be accredited with one of the four certifications. These are achieved as follows:

Similar to Fitwel, there are no on-site assessments from LEED’s side, but it is rather the project owner, who is in charge of measuring, analyzing, and reporting the required data for the certification. 

Pricing and Frequency

The LEED certification fees vary depending on the membership status of the business (LEED member or non-member). Additionally, the fees change based on the review and certification level that is being pursued. The fixed fees, namely registration, and building flat fee, add up to $6.000, while the variable rates per square foot start at $0.009 per square foot and raise up to $0.068 per square foot.  

Contrary to WELL and Fitwel, the LEED certification needs to be renewed every year. 

For whom is the LEED certificate the best option? 

LEED is a great option for businesses focusing on the physical building and its infrastructure and aiming to meet environmentally responsible construction practices.

LEED and indoor air quality

Although LEED is primarily a certificate focused on the infrastructure of the building, it also highly prioritizes indoor air quality and human well-being. It is for this reason that 22% of the obtainable points in LEED come from the category indoor environmental quality.

LEED has a very unique way of measuring this category since it uses two different dimensions to calculate the indoor environmental quality score: air quality monitoring and feedback from the building's occupants, also called the human experience score. 

While the air quality monitoring dimension requires regular monitoring of the standard air quality parameters, such as CO2, particulate matter, and TVOCs, the human experience score takes into account the occupant's comfort. The latter is calculated by means of surveys and feedback from the occupants; the higher the registered comfort score (human experience score), the higher the building's LEED points. 

The best way to ensure the occupant's comfort is by measuring the air quality in the same way they're perceiving it. Our Clairify sensor takes a human-focused approach, measuring parameters like aerosols, perceived temperature, and relative humidity to simulate the real human experience. Additionally, the Clairify dashboard allows you to collect surveys and feedback from the building's occupants to better calculate the level of comfort. 

This way, we help you fulfill LEED's indoor environmental quality category and achieve up to 20* points, or in other words, achieve 50%* of the required points to obtain the first level of LEED certification.  

 Are you curious how?  Check it with our calculator!

                              BREEAM                             

BREEAM was published in 1990 by the Building Research Establishment, making it the longest-established process to measure, rate, and certify the sustainability of buildings. As of now, over 500.000 buildings have been certified by BREEAM, and over 2 million are registered for certification.  

BREEAM is one of the most popular in the real estate industry and has been used in over 50 different countries to create more environmentally friendly and socially responsible buildings. 

This certificate is applicable to a variety of buildings and building stages, from new constructions and refurbishments to in-use buildings and communities. 

Scoring system

The BREEAM scoring system works slightly different than the previously mentioned certifications, since BREEAM uses a method based on percentages and weighted scores. 

To calculate the score, it is required to divide the number credits achieved in a certain category by the total number of achievable credits in that same category. Afterwards, this first percentage result needs to be multiplied by the weighted score.

For example, the category Water has a total of 38 achievable credits and a weighted score of 0.11. If a project achieves 29 credits in this category the calculation would be as follows: (29/38) * 0.11 = 0.0839. This translates to a 8.39% category score for Water.

This calculation is repeated across all the following 10 categories and then added up to get the total score achieved.

Like all previously mentioned certifications, there are different levels that can be reached depending on the number of points collected. However, as mentioned before, in the case of BREEAM this is defined in percentages, namely: 

In order to reach a BREEAM certification, a licensed BREEAM assessor must conduct both, the pre-assessment of the building and the assessment of the building when starting the certification process.   

Pricing and Frequency

The pricing for BREEAM ranges between $810 to $4.160 depending on the complexity of the process. However, the price for the consultancy fee to the licensed assessor is not included in this calculation.  

Contrarily to LEED, this specific certification needs to be renewed only every three years.  

For whom is BREEAM the best option?

Similar to LEED, BREEAM is a great option for projects looking to reach green standards for the infrastructure of the building. This certificate is particularly interesting for projects based in the UK, since it is better adapted to the UK's regulations and legislation. 

BREEAM and indoor air quality

It is known that poor indoor air quality is connected to a range of problems, including health issues, building deterioration, and poor occupant performance. Because of this, BREEAM rewards projects that aim to reduce pollution sources and improve indoor air quality by means of an Indoor Air Quality Plan (IAQP). 

Both BREEAM In-Use and BREEAM for New Constructions consider air quality and thermal comfort required building blocks to achieve the BREEAM certification. In fact, these two categories belong to the category Health & Wellness, which has one of the highest weight scores, namely 0.20 (20%) for BREEAM In-Use and 0.14 (14%) for BREEAM for New Constructions. 

The high degree of thermal comfort insights and indoor air quality management provided by the Clairify sensors and dashboard help you fulfill around 28% of the credits of the Health & Wellness category for the BREEAM In-Use and around 38% for the BREEAM for New Constructions certification.

Are you curious how? Take a look at our calculator!

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*Numbers are merely indications and no claim can be made directly on them. They depend on a case-by-case basis.