What is the WELL Building Standard?

The WELL Building Standard is a way of designing and operating a building to enhance the wellbeing and health of its students, staff, visitors, or the public accessing services within the building.

The University of Huddersfield has committed to implementing the WELL Building Standard in its new construction projects.

WELL applies the science of how physical and social environments affect human health, well-being, and performance. Developed over 10 years and backed by the latest scientific research, WELL outlines key building-level and organisational strategies across ten categories.

We believe that buildings should be developed with people’s health and wellness at the centre of design. The WELL Building Standard takes a holistic approach to health in the built environment addressing behaviour, operations and design

International WELL Building Institute

What are the WELL Building Standards concepts and features?

The standard is organised around ten key concepts, each relates to a different interaction with a person's health and well-being

Each concept is broken down into features and are categorised as either Preconditions—necessary for baseline WELL Certification, or Optimisations—optional enhancements, which together determine the level of certification above baseline certification.

Features can be:

  • Performance-based standards: which allow flexibility in how a project meets acceptable quantified thresholds.
  • Descriptive standards: which require that specific technology, design strategies, or protocols are implemented.

Every WELL project must achieve all precondititons and then may score points for any aditional optimisations completed. These scores add up to a rating from BRONZE (all preconditions met) to PLATINUM (all preconditions met, plus an additional 40 points achieved). 

The WELL building standard is designed to measure the actual performance of the building project and not just the design so testing is undertaken once the project is operational and in use before the project can be certified

Find out more about the WELL building Standard by visiting their website (external).

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Jo Cox More in Common Centre

Find out more about the WELL Building Standard within the Jo Cox More in Common Centre

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Daphne Steele Building

Find out more about how the WELL Building Standard is being built into the new Daphne Steele Building