Part 3. The Wellbeing Brief. What is it and how could it help you or your building?
WELL does many things well (pun very much intended), it sets out rigorous evidence based targets and it provides a process and methodology for tracking and proving those outcomes. Whilst this is successful in its own way, I would propose that there is a fantastic opportunity in going beyond this, as explored in Part 2.
As a commercial architect working on commercial projects, I have often been asked to design and implement using ‘WELL Principles’, a phrase that is not endorsed by the WELL Building Standard or IWBI. Often requested where it is too onerous and too expensive to pursue WELL certification, the design team is often asked to use the principles of WELL throughout the design of the building, producing a summary to document how the principles of WELL have been met.
Whilst this is fairly easy to implement, there is no real evidence, tracking or quality control on the level of wellbeing designed into the building, therefore the wellbeing offering can vary massively.
Therefore, as introduced in Part 2, The Wellbeing Brief answers this request with a much more robust and evidence-based methodology, targeting a real wellbeing offering which meets the building occupiers needs and goals with a documented process. Therefore, contributing towards better designed buildings and more sustainable buildings from the outset, with a level of quality assurance.
The Wellbeing Brief
Decision
A decision is made by the building owners or occupiers that a building or space should be improved to provide a great wellbeing offer.
Goals
The decision-making team meets with the relevant stakeholders to determine the specific wellbeing offering they want to provide, why they want to offer it and what does that look like.
Targets
Based on these goals, specific evidence-based targets would be designed to provide quantitative or qualitative measures to assess these goals by and assess whether the goal has been successfully reached, or whether more work is required to get there.
Scope
These wellbeing goals in the form of evidence-based targets would then form part of the original brief to be implemented into the design teams briefing.
Tracking
Key project stages (kick-off, planning, implementation as a minimum) would be targeted as opportunities to review the project progress and whether the goals are being worked towards and implemented. If not, then the review would look at why these aren’t being targeted and whether the approach needs to change, keeping the process fluid and responsive rather than rigid and immovable. This would continue throughout the project until practical completion.
Reporting
At practical completion, the final assessments and gathering of evidence against the evidence-based targets would be collated and a report produced with the above documented. This report would form a tangible and evidence-based document, demonstrating how a good wellbeing offer has been provided. This can be used for marketing purposes, for sales and letting opportunities or for signalling to tenants that a robust wellbeing offer is in place.
Post-occupancy evaluation
To ensure the good wellbeing offer is maintained, ongoing wellbeing focused POE would be carried out once the building or space is occupied to ensure any ongoing goals are being met.
At the conclusion of this 3 part post discussing wellbeing, sustainability and implementation, it is clear that there should be a choice of paths available when implementing high quality wellbeing offering; dependent on the goals, the budget and the desired outcome. WELL is fantastic for many projects, and will continue to develop to meet the current trends (as it has with the Health & Safety Rating in response to Covid and in the simplification of some of its requirements). However, there is still certainly room for a less onerous and more holistic approach, which expands on some of the themes not fully explored by WELL.
What is important however, as demonstrated by the flowchart in Part 2, is that considering this early on is the key to ensuring decisions are made holistically with the sustainable targets also in mind.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on whether the wellbeing brief approach outlined above would be something you’d be interested in, or whether you’ve used different approaches and how they’ve worked out.
Project Wellbeing 