Combining LEED Certified Buildings and WELL Healthy Buildings at Scale
Welcome to episode 075 of the Green Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality.
I’m your host, Matt Morley and in this episode I’m in Amsterdam in the Netherlands talking to John Harrison, President of A Sustainable Production (ASAP), a woman-owned global sustainability and wellness consulting firm that specializes in implementing the LEED green building and WELL healthy building standards at scale.
He’s also Strategic Advisor for BEE Corporation out of Hong Kong, another big LEED certification company specialized in the retail sector.
John is a LEED Fellow, a licensed architect and one of the world’s experts on applying sustainable strategies at scale in the real estate sector.
While at Starbucks he played a pivotal role in implementing over 1,600 green certified stores in 22 different territories and all 50 US states, making it one of the most successful green building programs of its kind in the retail world.
John also spent 13 years at Mithun in Seattle, one of the leading sustainable design practices in the US and a practice to have on your radar if you’re even remotely interested in green building architecture.
Incidentally, he also hired one of my ex-team members Hannah Shabb, a talented Stanford grad destined for great things, so I know he has good taste in recruitment.!
John thanks for taking the time to be here. Perhaps you could describe your role at ASAP what the team looks like there. Obviously you're based in Europe while the rest of the team is largely US based as I understand it?
John Harrison
Correct. So Jennifer who's the founder is actually based out of Los Angeles and has been for the entirety of the time the company has existed so it's I think 11 years now, she's made herself the preeminent WELL AP in the world and the International Well Building Institute (IWBI) at that time in around 2019 was starting to really commit to a portfolio-based solution.
They had existed for a few years and had both the certification platform but we're looking to move toward something that was more inclusive of broader business portfolios.
Jen had known that I had obviously been with Starbucks for many years and had built that program there that was able to take the US Green Building Council LEED certified buildings and build it at scale.
So we began talking about how we could partner up to take the scale knowledge that I have and the corporate side that I'd learned from that time then combine it with the WELL healthy buildings knowledge she had and apply that to portfolios.
How to choose a consultant for green building rating system or healthy buildings standard
mattmorley
For anyone who hasn't been through the process or who is considering certification for a project that they're looking at in real estate.
How location specific is it based on if you have a project in one city do you need to find a certification consultancy in the same city, state or country or is it pretty much delivered online virtually nowadays.
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John Harrison
So it's pretty much delivered virtually and the pandemic has facilitated a different look at things. I think that especially when it came to US Green Building Council LEED or BREEAM projects you probably would have a little bit more of a regional or local approach.
But when you're working with national and multinational corporations and even some individual projects which I've done over the last few years too it's dependent on that anymore and the standards and systems are fairly universal now.
So I'm in Amsterdam, it gives me opportunity to interact with leadership from IWBI for instance because they have a whole leadership team in in Europe.
The majority of what I've done over the last couple years in the Netherlands I sit at a desk in front of a screen just like we're doing right now!
How to achieve LEED certification at scale
mattmorley
You mentioned delivering projects at scale. Let's dig into that a little bit - what would a typical context be for when a client comes to you?
Do they already have an existing portfolio of properties and suddenly they wake up to the idea that perhaps certification would be good and they think well let's do all 10 or is it is it a very more nuanced situation typically where a client comes to you with a portfolio.
John Harrison
Yes, and yes! It kind of goes back to some realizations that came to bear at Starbucks.
So I'd worked on a lot of really interesting Retail hospitality but also education-driven things at Mithun and we were on the forefront of LEED as it emerged in the late 90s it had some of the first and various categories for LEED projects but they were all once offs and I'd never really considered the certification to be the point.
WELL At Scale
It was always trying to do the best thing by the project, by the client and then the certification was just a reward you got at the end but what became to be real apparent as we were building the Starbucks program was that in order to do things where you have hundreds if not thousands of people who need to chime in you need systems and that's what WELL At Scale and LEED Volume were designed to do.
Real impact happens too because you can as an architect spend my whole career doing one green building at a time but you know when you are able to apply standards across an entire portfolio you have a much bigger impact with regard to conservation, carbon, energy consumption, human health..
The role of ESG in LEED certification and well being in real estate portfolios
So what's happening now is companies are looking either from an ESG standpoint where they want to make a splash and be able to report their achievements or looking on the scale of trying to affect a portfolio.
WELL Health & Safety rating system
We have a client in the Philippines that has 3 or 4 major high-rises that they have built and Operate as offices or mixed use. So they just have a small portfolio and that fits into the system just fine.
There it was less about sustainable buildings and more about WELL Health & Safety ratings for them and then we also did a massive amount of WELL Health Safety ratings for T-mobile USA where they were looking to try and make sure that somewhere around 2500 assets were able to get recognition through the WELL At Scale program.
Healthy community and sustainable community certification process
mattmorley
And another way then to think about a sustainable buildings certification process that has a degree of scale is with a community where it's perhaps bigger than just 4 walls. No matter how big the building is but perhaps something like a campus or an entire district, or village.
There you're having to customize the approach to LEED and WELL in those instances?
Combining elements of LEED standards and WELL standards
John Harrison
Especially on the LEED side they have community level and city level scale that you can apply but what we found and there are a couple projects that we're working on right now on the ASAP side that are development communities using a variety of approaches.
So they might be using using WELL geared toward residential for part of the project or they might be using the LEED platform for residential, so you can kind of do it in combination.
The mindshare in the late 90s when we first started doing LEED in my architectural career that was it pretty much and BREEAM was emerging at some point and. There were other programs emerging but there wasn't a lot of variety and they were almost exclusively focused on conservation and waste diversion. There wasn't a lot of depth beyond that.
But now there's so many different systems that can be applied; you can also apply them in a custom fashion. Basically you can use a variety of different inputs from different rating systems to get the client where they want to get to.
The evolution of the US Green Building Council LEED system
mattmorley
And have you sensed that LEED is responding to evolving market dynamics or has it in a sense led from the front I mean what one can't help but notice the recent arrival or relatively recent arrival and and sort of massive upsurge and interest in WELL and then LEED slowly nudging closer to or picking up a few more of the healthy and wellness terminology along the way?
Is it fixed or a standard that's in evolution having to adapt constantly and reiterate?
Towards healthy green buildings
John Harrison
I guess the honest answer is that it didn't really reinvent itself for a while. So LEED categories haven't changed that much over the course of the last couple decades. But they were starting to employ some of the terminology and some of the strategies that we're seeing coming from WELL and other rating systems that were a little more human focused and it goes back to the bigger picture issue right now.
When you talk to people inside the industry about what current trends it all comes down to carbon and about health. I mean those are the the 2 primary themes. So what's happening with LEED right now is they've had a change in leadership in the last few years and they've tried to rethink their approach.
At this last Greenbuild in Washington DC they announced a little bit more detail about LEED version 5 which is definitely going to have more focus on the carbon issue - energy use, renewable energy, energy consumption and energy efficiency.
Then there is also more focus on human health. I think that is the dual answer.
WELL Health & Safety Rating
mattmorley
Nice and the demand that you're seeing at the moment around WELL or the so slightly lighter version of the Health and Safety Rating is that coming from specific sectors or is it a fairly evenly spread from your perspective? Does that focus more on indoor air quality and indoor environmental quality than the LEED buildings program?
John Harrison
That's interesting. It's kind of all over the place but primarily with the WELL Health & Safety rating that was a reaction to what was happening with Covid and it hasn't totally disappeared, the primary motivation for clients was - we need to get our employees back in the office and we need to get our customers back in our spaces.
So T-mobile will be a good example - they have commercial real estate properties that are offices, some call centers and so basically office-driven properties but they also had somewhere around 2300 company or retail facilities and what they wanted to do is give some assurance to The people who used those spaces that they had made an effort to make sure they'd be safe.
You do see it a lot in the office space as well as the combo office retail or showroom space quite a bit and we've seen a little bit in office and manufacturing so anywhere where you have like a density of people.
Using the WELL certification for residential real estate
mattmorley
WELL is obviously a fairly high barrier to entry in most cases - a smaller property developer might look at it and think it's just a bit too onerous and so with smaller scale projects I notice a lot of people creating their own bespoke versions of a healthy building standard or just applying certain elements that are most relevant to them all the way down sort of single-family homes and a whole network of consultants some of whom we've had on the podcast in the past just applying many of the same principles but more freestyle let's say.
For example they focus on indoor air quality, indoor environmental quality especially and personal well being rather than energy efficiency or renewable energy perhaps.
That raises the question around residential - WELL is there but perhaps not as much as in some other real estate sectors. Do you think there's a reason behind that because health would be the most personal of all questions in a way, ideal for a home environment.
Arguably it's even more personal than for most people than decarbonization in terms of value drivers and why you would buy a ah residence in 1 building versus another.
John Harrison
Yeah, exactly I think long-term yes as it related to Covid and the health safety rating was more about protecting us from each other protecting us from an Airborne disease.
We are seeing a lot more interest on the residential side nowadays. We've done a little bit of Multifamily. We've definitely done some mixed-use where you have apartments in Mid-rises or high-rises with a retail platform below and there's an attraction for renting knowing that the space has met a certain metric, so you're seeing it emerging more and more.
Applying the WELL Standard to existing buildings
John Harrison
Anyone can go on the IWBI's website and look at the standard. You know anybody can access the LEED standard too - information is flowing easily and you can customize whatever you want to do some some basic things for whatever you're building.
That's another thing that people are doing - really looking at customized approaches. So for a single family project it perhaps wouldn't be necessary to do a certification or a rating or get an endorsement.
However, if you are a company that is is reliant on certain kinds of funding you want to be able to report back, you need the legitimacy of a third-party verification that will help you kind of get your ESG numbers up in order to access certain funding, for example.
ESG real estate focus on LEED rating system and healthy buildings
mattmorley
Yeah, that strikes me as fundamental to this whole discussion. The idea of pressure from above, of investment groups who need to align with the ESG principles and therefore start applying pressure further down the chain to the developer is great because that's exactly what we need.
Customized plans for superior green buildings
So then within the context of ASAP do you mix standards to create something specific, is it sometimes about going further than the standards can take you or is it just a sort of mix-and-match approach in some instances with your clients.
John Harrison
Yeah, all of that. I think right now we have a couple clients where we're doing a mix between WELL standards, LEED standards and certain resiliency standards.
For instance, we're doing a community in Florida that has some exposure based on weather events there. They want everything to be based on the concept of wellness. But you couldn't just ignore the fact that you have something fairly close to the shoreline with a hurricane risk.
It does make sense to the client ultimately because they're trying to get at several different goals.
mattmorley
Not something to be undertaken lightly clearly - I think it requires mastery of your subject and in this case of both WELL and and LEED if you're going to start mixing and matching and I think it's it's a reflection of of the resources and the A-team that you have built that you're able to do that successfully.
Are there any specific projects that you're currently involved in that are making you optimistic for the year ahead - you mentioned something about a project in a ski resort as well. I'd be interested to understand how you apply some of this knowledge to a ski in and ski out resort.
Integrating well being and green building concepts into a residential community ski resort
John Harrison
Yeah, so it's in Utah and I don't know if you've ever been skiing in Utah but it's known as one of the best ski locations in the world.
There are residential portions, some more public portions on the hospitality side and the site is also a place meant to be used year-round So folks come in, they rent or they buy homes, there are trails, the interaction with nature and then of course you can Ski.
We could have just done like a community level LEED certification or something but it just made more sense to apply a combination of what's available for them.
So the wellness part is kind of the outdoor nature of things and the expectation of that experience sort of makes sense.
mattmorley
I think that's a good example of how it's not always about the plaque on the front door as you say it's also about adding value to the residential or visitor experience in the end and finding the sweet spot in terms of how you can add value.
Not just to an investor group behind the scenes but also to end consumer and tapping into that desire for wellness features or some sense of third party backed strategy behind suggesting that this is a place where you can be healthy.
The value-add of a wellbeing certification for healthy buildings
John Harrison
You're adding value and there's enough brand recognition with some of these major rating systems too to where people know what they are now, they may not be able to tell you much detail what they are but they know it because it's been around for a while.
You know I think with a lot of the retail work that I do that is a huge part of it and it was a huge part of it at Starbucks for their customers But also for the employees.
So the basic reality we found at Starbucks for instance was doing some kind of surveying of the flock so to speak - us doing the LEED program was probably more important to employees and it was to the customers because the customers just sort of assume we were doing the right thing but the employees are all for the most part aged 16 - 24 and they have a different expectation than those of us who have gray hair.
LEED Certified Buildings and interiors for Corporate Social Responsibility
So it was a Corporate Social Responsibility which was trying to do the right thing and I think you see that in in other brands too like even some of the higher end Retail brands.
They're trying to build relationships with people who will be lifelong customers and Those customers need to know that the company is at least trying to do the right thing, they want to make sure that their purchase is at least not being a negative impact on the Planet.
Human health oriented, LEED certified buildings to attract talent
mattmorley
So that's both internal and external stakeholders. Essentially yeah, it's often. It's easy to forget that. But the idea of talent attraction and retention. You know, based on how you follow through on corporate values right? And and.
That's where the certifications really kick in because it's a gold standard and that then helps in terms of recruitment when it is a value based decision - Gen Z or Gen Alpha coming up now they're just expecting it.
John Harrison
Yeah you you can't get away with not addressing those issues. The expectation of those who coming up is that you have to play your part as a global citizen. Otherwise they're not going to buy your stuff. It's the crude way to say it but they're just not going to buy it or they're not going to come work for you.
mattmorley
Well, it's a very optimistic message to end on right there!