Fitwel Announces 2024 Best in Building Health Awards

Fitwel, the building health certification system, has announced the winners of the 2024 Best in Building Health Awards. The awards are designed to honour the most innovative real estate companies and individuals ‘setting the standard for health and wellbeing in the built environment across the globe, leveraging the trusted Fitwel Standard to enhance quality of life and drive value through design and operational excellence’. This year’s winners include projects from Canada, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Thailand, and the United States.

During 2023, Fitwel enjoyed an impressive 78 percent increase in square footage of buildings on the platform, representing 2.5 billion sq. ft., which the firm says underscores the growing recognition of the value of health-optimised built environments. Top performing sectors include industrial, student housing, multifamily housing, life sciences, office, and retail.

“This year’s winners are true champions exemplifying Fitwel’s global reach of bringing building health to all. Fitwel is empowering industry leaders to implement a framework that prioritizes stakeholder health and well-being, improves ESG performance, future-proofs asset value, and mitigates risk,” said Joanna Frank, President & CEO of Fitwel. “With the recent introduction of Fitwel v3 for asset certification and phase 2 of Social Performance as an entity-wide certification pathway, we anticipate a transformative year ahead. The Standard, now providing 100 percent portfolio coverage, reflects the latest research on health, climate change, and value, positioning Fitwel as a catalyst for industry-wide change.”

“Fitwel continues to expand globally, evidenced by the diversity of companies, countries, and assets in this year’s Best in Building Health Award winners,” said Zachary Flora, Executive Vice President of Growth at Fitwel. “As an organization committed to impacting health at scale and driving value by optimizing the built environment for people, it is incredible to see the adoption of Fitwel as an asset certification and also as a trusted source of social performance data used to strengthen ESG initiatives at scale. Through the new Fitwel v3 Standard and Social Performance metrics, we will continue to drive market transformation and set the bar for healthy buildings. Congratulations to our award winners who epitomize that transformation.”

“Fitwel continues to help companies understand and act on a wide range of practical, impactful measures that can be taken to promote safety, physical, social, and mental health, and more broadly, a culture of engagement among the workforce,” said Ari Frankel, a Principal at KKR Capstone, who is a member of the Center for Active Design’s Board of Directors and who was also a founding member of the Fitwel Leadership Advisory Board while working with Alexandria Real Estate Equities. “This movement, which began to scale in commercial real estate, is poised for further adoption and growth across companies across a wide range of industries, sizes, and geographies.”

Best in Building Health Leadership Awards 2024

Special Recognition for Industry and Individual Leadership in 2023

• Industry Leadership Award: Fitwel Champion Growth | PGIM Real Estate (pictured)
  Recognized for outstanding progress in registering and certifying projects across their global portfolio as a Fitwel Champion
• Industry Leadership Award: Regional Growth | Aldar
  Recognized for being a Fitwel trailblazer, developing and managing healthy buildings that prioritize the well-being of end users across the Middle East, one of Fitwel’s fastest-growing regions.
• Individual Leadership Award: ESG Leadership | Eric Duchon, Global Head of ESG for Blackstone Real Estate, Dan Egan, Americas Head of ESG for Blackstone Real Estate
  Recognized for their commitment to building resilient environments by integrating healthy buildings and Fitwel across their portfolio companies, strengthening properties and delivering long-term value to their investors.
• Industry Leadership Award: Sector Leadership – Student Housing | Evolution Sustainability Group
  Recognized for their commitment to expanding the healthy building movement through the Student Housing sector.

Special Recognition for All-Time Achievements

• Fitwel Excellence Award: Most Certifications of All-Time
  Harrison Street
• Fitwel Impact Award: Highest Scoring Project of All-Time (Design)
  Green Matrix Consulting Company, Five To The Tenth, Hung Kuo Group | Eco Utopia Community, Taiwan
• Fitwel Impact Award: Highest Scoring Project of All-Time (Built)
  Vesta Consulting, UAB, Bei Capital, UAB | BLC, Lithuania

Fitwel also unveiled its second annual Top 20 Ambassadors List, an initiative launched in 2023 highlighting industry-leading professionals demonstrating exemplary engagement, leadership, and achievements as Fitwel Ambassadors. The honourees were selected out of over 4,500 professionals across 50+ countries for their success in project registrations and Fitwel certifications and the number of people impacted through those certifications. To see the full list of this year’s Top 20 Ambassadors, visit Fitwel’s website here.

Special Recognition Ambassador Awards

• 2024 Ambassador of the Year
  Madison Dorman, Director of Certifications | Verdani Partners
• Ambassador With the Highest Scoring Project
  Chia Ming Huang, Founder & Principal | Green Matrix Consulting Company
• Company with the Most Ambassadors and Most New Ambassadors
  Gensler

Fitwel will also be continuing its publication series, Building Health, featuring the people and projects defining the very best in building health.

Below is the full list of 2024 Best in Building Health winners, which can also be found here.

For Achievements in 2023:

• Highest-Scoring Project (Built)
  Certification Project Team: Frasers Property UK
  Project: Winnersh Triangle
  Location: Reading, England

• Highest Scoring Project (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Green Matrix Consulting Company, Five To The Tenth, Hung Kuo Group
  Project: Eco Utopia Community
  Location: Taiwan

• Greatest Number of Certifications (Consultant)
  Company: UL Solutions

• Greatest Number of Certifications (Owner)
  Company: Harrison Street

• Greatest Number of Certifications (Tenant)
  Company: Amgen

• Greatest Number of Registered Projects
  Company: BGIS

• Most People Impacted Across Building Scorecards
  Company: RXR

• Most People Impacted Across Site Scorecards
  Company: Oracle, Inc.

• Highest Square Footage
  Company: RXR

• Highest Acreage
  Company: Aldar

Highest Scoring Projects 2024

For Achievements in 2023

• Commercial Interior Space v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Team: QuadReal Property Group
  Project: QuadReal Head Office at Park Place
  Location: Vancouver, Canada

• Commercial Interior Space v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Team: PGIM Real Estate
  Project: NJ-Tower-14 PGIM Real Estate
  Location: Newark, NJ

• Single-Tenant Building v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: Africus Co., Ltd., ??Thai Health Promotion Foundation
  Project: Thai Health Promotion Foundation
  Location: Bangkok, Thailand

• Single-Tenant Building v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Samskara Studio, Lincoln Property Company, Arrowstreet, Studio ENEE, Soden Sustainability
  Project: Seaport Circle: Pavilion
  Location: Boston, MA

• Multi-Tenant Base Building v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: Paramount Group, Sustainable Investment Group
  Project: 111 Sutter Street
  Location: San Francisco, CA

• Multi-Tenant Base Building v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Team: Credit Suisse Asset Management, CBRE Ltd.
  Project: 3 Rivergate
  Location: Bristol, United Kingdom

• Multi-Tenant Whole Building v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Team: Beacon Capital Partners, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL
  Project: AMA Plaza / 330 N. Wabash
  Location: Chicago, IL

• Multi-Tenant Whole Building v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Team: UBS Asset Management – Euroinvest, Cushman & Wakefield, EVORA Global
  Project: WTC Barcelona Almeda Park Phase 1 Building #3
  Location: Barcelona, Spain

• Multifamily Residential v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: ESG Europe, Elkstone Partners, Hatch Student Living
  Project: Copley Court
  Location: Cork, Ireland

• Multifamily Residential v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Harrison Street, DLC Europe
  Project: Compass, UK
  Location: Birmingham, UK

• Retail v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: Brightworks Sustainability, Halekulani Corporation
  Project: Halepuna Waikiki
  Location: Honolulu, HI

• Retail v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Tishman Speyer, Arup
  Project: Enterprise Research Campus – Hotel Component
  Location: Boston, MA

• Community v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: UL Solutions, Savills Property Service (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
  Project: Central Park
  Location: Beijing, China

• Community v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Green Matrix Consulting Company, Five To The Tenth, Hung Kuo Group
  Project: Eco Utopia Community
  Location: Taiwan

• Commercial Industrial Site v2.1 (Built)
  Certification Project Team: Frasers Property UK
  Project: Winnersh Triangle
  Location: Reading, England

• Commercial Industrial Site v2.1 (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Beijing Central Business District Administration Committee, Beijing Yintai Business Management Group Co., Ltd., China Academy of Building Research
  Project: Public Green Plaza in Beijing CBD Core Area
  Location: Beijing, China

• Senior Housing vbeta (Built)
  Certification Project Teams: Green Courte Partners, MA Design
  Project: Verena at Hilliard
  Location: Hilliard, OH

• Senior Housing vbeta (Design)
  Certification Project Teams: Pennrose, LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc., DiMella Shaffer, Thornton Tomasetti, NEI
  Project: The Pryde
  Location: Hyde Park, MA