Designing buildings which support wellbeing may seem straightforward in this day and age, where there is a multitude of data on wellbeing.
However, in practice, the stakeholders shaping real estate projects are working within a myriad of competing demands. Design teams balance ambitious wellbeing strategies against cost plans, programme constraints and technical feasibility, while asset managers are under growing pressure to demonstrate that investments translate into real, measurable outcomes for occupiers.
At the same time, different buildings, tenant profiles and surrounding communities create very different needs, making it difficult to know where to focus wellbeing design efforts.
With increasing scrutiny from clients, investors and reporting frameworks and budget constraints, the challenge becomes how to prioritise interventions that will have the greatest impact and how to evidence that impact in a way that is credible, comparable and compelling.
Social Value Portal (SVP) and the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) share a common objective: maximising wellbeing in the built environment through thoughtful, evidence-led building design and operations.
While we approach this goal from complementary perspectives, we have each developed tools that help organisations to embed wellbeing into real estate projects in a structured and credible way:
SVP’s Real Estate Wellbeing Calculator
IWBI’s WELL Real Estate Rating
When used together, organisations can effectively target the right interventions to meet the needs of their occupiers and create specific, evidence-backed business cases for strategic investments in health and wellbeing.
The WELL Building Standard (WELL) is a globally recognised framework for advancing health and wellbeing in buildings. Created and administered by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), WELL was launched in 2014 as the first building standard focused exclusively on human health and wellbeing, grounded in both public health research and building science.
WELL provides clear, best-practice design and operational guidance across 10 key themes such as air, light, movement, mind, and community. It functions as both a roadmap and a certification system, enabling project teams to design, measure, and verify how buildings comprehensively support the people who use them.
Today, WELL is applied internationally across offices, homes, schools, healthcare settings, and large portfolios, helping organisations demonstrate investment and leadership in wellbeing-focused design.
IWBI's brand-new WELL Real Estate Rating serves as an entry point to the broader WELL Standard - a mechanism to guide and validate a building’s physical characteristics, in both newly constructed and existing buildings.
This rating focuses specifically on base building infrastructure, establishing a foundation from which real estate owners and investors can continue to advance health, well-being, and social sustainability across every phase of the asset lifecycle. When paired with the WELL Operations Rating and the WELL Performance Rating, the Real Estate Rating becomes part of a continuous journey toward WELL Certification.
The WELL Real Estate Rating includes the most relevant strategies from the WELL Standard to address indoor environment quality, asset and community resiliency, responsible material selection, and enhanced occupant experience.
The Real Estate Wellbeing Calculator (REWC) is SVP’s tool for embedding wellbeing into real estate design and planning from the outset.
Launched in 2025 and informed by data from a national wellbeing survey of nearly 8,000 people, REWC enables project teams to value the potential wellbeing impact of different design interventions.
The calculator estimates the expected wellbeing £ value and associated percentage point life satisfaction uplift per year for workers and residents attributed to specific features such as green space or inclusive wayfinding, taking into account individual’s characteristics (such as age or gender) and geographical context (for example, urban or rural settings).
By identifying which interventions are likely to have the greatest impact based on local need and demographics, REWC supports clearer, evidence-led decision-making around targeted interventions and ensures wellbeing is meaningfully represented and considered in design and planning business cases.
Used together, these tools make it easier for stakeholders to move from wellbeing intent to prioritised, credible action at the beginning of the RIBA lifecycle.
REWC acts as the starting point: by quantifying the wellbeing value of different design attributes for specific local demographics, project teams can forecast which interventions will have the greatest impact for their occupiers and communities. This allows for a data informed approach to wellbeing decision-making - giving design teams and asset managers a clear, needs-based rationale for where to focus.
Once priorities are identified through REWC, the WELL Real Estate Rating provides the "how."
WELL's suite of evidence-based design, construction and operation strategies offers detailed, best-practice guidance on how to deliver against those priorities to the highest standard. In fact, the REWC approach itself is aligned with the WELL Integrative Design feature. WELL also provides independent, third-party verification of those commitments - translating wellbeing ambitions into a credible, recognised achievement that resonates with investors, occupiers, and reporting frameworks like GRESB.
The result is a complementary workflow: REWC surfaces what matters most and builds the business case for action, while WELL defines and validates what good looks like in practice.
Many of the features assessed through REWC map directly to WELL concepts and criteria, meaning projects applying REWC are likely already contributing towards WELL-aligned outcomes, even if certification is not the primary goal. Formalising this alignment simply adds rigour, comparability, and external credibility to work already underway.
Used together, the tools offer a powerful combination: WELL helps guide and validate design and operational excellence, while REWC helps quantify and communicate the wellbeing impact that can be achieved. Overall, this can reduce duplication of effort, strengthen business cases, and provide the full wellbeing picture to evidence value to investors, occupiers, and communities.
SVP and IWBI recently hosted a joint webinar to dive deeper into how REWC and WELL work together in practice, sharing real-world insights, and highlighting how teams can maximise wellbeing outcomes across their projects and portfolios.
Watch the webinar recording below: