Fitwel has announced the implementation of the Relational Data tool that allows real estate companies to rank their properties’ and entities’ healthy building performance against their peers. A first for the industry, it adds value to Fitwel Certification by providing users entity-level ranking against like-companies. The announcement marks Fitwel’s ever-increasing product offering, expanding from a healthy building certification to a comprehensive data platform that drives market transformation for the industry.
Joanna Frank, CEO of Fitwel, first revealed the tool live on stage during a keynote speech at the PERE Asia Summit in Singapore on February 21. Her talk, entitled “The Future of Buildings Already Exists - How Do You Stack Up?”, discussed why the impact of healthy buildings and the “S” in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investments) are the untapped value creation opportunities. While similar ranking systems exist for Environmental metrics, Fitwel’s relational data is the first of its kind to begin to track the Social pillar of ESG for the real estate industry.
Fitwel is a healthy building certification originally created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), used by top real estate companies across the globe to ensure their assets are designed and operated to positively impact the health, productivity, and satisfaction of residents, employees and tenants.
“The industry has long been asking for ranking data to understand good, better and best,” said Frank. “Not only will you be able to understand where you sit in relation to your peers, but it supports continuous improvement of assets with regard to social impact by providing a quantifiable roadmap.”
In addition to measuring performance amongst all certified projects on Fitwel, the new tool also measures performance of Walkability & Transportation and Environmental Quality - two of the top five “S” metrics most tracked by investors, as found in the New Investor Consensus: The Rising Demand for Healthy Buildings (March 2021). The Relational Data dashboard visualizes key data insights with side-by-side rankings, making it easy for a company to digest where and how to improve their healthy building performance and communicate achievements to stakeholders. The platform’s data also highlights how leading real estate industry companies stack up against each other and creates a higher standard for healthy buildings.
Ultimately, the Relational Data tool will help real estate companies measure the effectiveness of Fitwel implementation and make more informed business decisions in implementing healthy buildings to find areas of improvement for health-centered ‘S’ initiatives.
