Wellbeing

Sustainable buildings provide benefits to the environment, society and economy (also known as planet, people and profit) and create win-win-win situations. In other words, a sustainable building should help to reduce carbon emissions, provide a safe, healthy, comfortable and stimulating environment and help to improve satisfaction and productivity of the users.

The quality of a building can have a huge impact on the health and wellbeing of the occupants. A building's Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is determined by five factors:

• thermal comfort
• indoor air quality
• odours
• sound levels
• light levels

There are quantitative measures which may include:

• Air quality (for pollutants and moisture/odour etc.)
• Air movement
• Ventilation (in terms of fresh air and temperatures)
• Noise levels (external, internal from staff and internal from assets)
• Light and glare
• Temperature and responsiveness of building and controls
• Management of building services (complaints etc.)

And qualitative measures:

• Perceived comfort and health from surveys of occupants
• Inferred information on stress and ease of use of spaces (controls, access etc)
• Sickness records

BSRIA provides a number of services that can positively change the built environment to improve the wellbeing of occupants. These include:

• Soft Landings (ensuring the design meets the needs of the occupiers)
• Mock-up testing (testing a design idea before construction to allow for low cost design changes)
• Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) (investigating ventilation problems, thermal comfort complaints and sick building syndrome)
• Post occupancy evaluation (determining what was planned was delivered)
• Indoor air quality and odours (measurement of the quality against standards)
• Building manuals and user guides (ensuring operators and occupiers understand how they can interact with the building)