Health, wellbeing and productivity: An integrated approach to providing quality indoor environments
People living in developed countries spend typically 90% or more of their time indoors and more susceptible individuals, such as the elderly, infants and those with pre-existing medical conditions, may spend almost all of their time indoors.
Poor housing conditions have been demonstrated to have adverse effects on occupants’ health and wellbeing with associated large-scale health costs. In the education and health care sectors, the quality of the indoor environment has been shown to affect the educational performance of students and the recovery rates of patients, respectively. In commercial environments, typically up to 90% of the operational costs to an organisation are associated with the staff, with the remaining 10% covering building rental and energy expenditure. The provision of good quality indoor environments in buildings is, therefore, essential for the health, comfort, wellbeing and also the productivity of the occupants.
Major building owners and specifiers are now increasingly demanding highperformance office buildings, recognising that those with high quality indoor environments can command higher rental incomes from improving staff health, wellbeing and productivity. However, though the benefits of healthier buildings are increasingly being recognised in this sector, there is still a general lack of understanding and knowledge of the issues involved and hence little guidance on how to achieve such healthy buildings across the whole of the built environment.
On Thursday 28th February 2019, BRE will be running ‘Health, Wellbeing and Productivity: An Integrated Approach to Providing Quality Indoor Environments’ – a conference which will concentrate on ways of providing and maintaining quality indoor environments in both domestic and non-domestic buildings.
It will focus primarily on the key factors – such as air quality, ventilation, lighting, and environmental noise – that must be considered in an integrated manner in order to provide good quality indoor environments. Leading speakers from BRE, industry and regulatory authorities will provide the latest information along with their views and experiences, and case study examples.
For further details of the speaker line-up and to book your place visit https://bregroup.com/hwpconference entering discount code EB20HWP at check-out for an early bird discount (only available until 21 December).
--BRE Buzz
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki
- Assessing health and wellbeing in buildings.
- BRE Buzz articles.
- BRE wellbeing research paper competition.
- Building related illness.
- Building use studies (BUS).
- Human comfort in buildings.
- Indoor air quality.
- Indoor environmental quality.
- Light pollution.
- Sick building syndrome.
- TG10 2016 At a glance, wellbeing.
- The full cost of poor housing.
- Thermal comfort and wellbeing.
- Wellbeing.
- Wellbeing and creativity in workplace design - case studies.
- WELL and BREEAM align.
- WELL Building Standard.
- What we know about wellbeing.
Featured articles and news
Specifying rendered external wall insulation for fire safety
How to interrogate the evidence provided to the specifier.
The benefits of writing articles for your organisation
How to create a profile for your organisation and publish for free.
No Falls Week. The importance of safe working at height
What to expect and what is on offer to avoid accidents.
Scottish Government action to reach net-zero targets
Retrofit expert group highlight critical actions needed.
A forward thinking, inclusive global community of members.
From engineered product life-spans, to their extension.
Circular economy in the built environment
A brief description from 2021. Where are we now?
Mental Health Awareness Week with ABS
Architects Benevolent Society programme of activity.
CLC publishes domestic retrofit competency framework
Roadmap of Skills for net zero.
May 13-19: Moving more for our mental health.
Understanding is key to conservation.
Open industry engagement survey seeks responses
Institutions and the importance of engagement.
National Retrofit Hub unveils new guide
Digital Building Logbooks and Retrofit: An Introduction.
Enhancing construction site reporting efficiency
Through digitisation and the digital revolution.