Delos, Glumac Create Building Wellness Bond

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

New York—Delos’s role in the well-building movement continues to grow, as the wellness real estate and technology firm forms a strategic alliance with Glumac, a full-service consulting and engineering company. Together, the partners will work to further the evolution of indoor environments into spaces that foster health and wellness.

Paul Scialla, Delos CEO

It’s a partnership made in wellness paradise, and it centers on the WELL Building Standard—the first performance-based system for the measuring and certification of the built environment’s impact on human health as determined through a group of factors: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind. WELL, managed by the International Well Building Institute, was pioneered by Delos and is based on best practices in design and construction, with evidence-based medical and scientific research at its core. Commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group became the very first commercial office space in the world to achieve WELL certification in 2014. Glumac enters the partnership with Delos as a vehicle for advancing WELL.

“Glumac is a globally recognized engineering and consulting firm that is often looked to as a leader in sustainable design, and we are thrilled about the potential of our alliance to further propel the adoption of healthy buildings and indoor spaces,” Paul Scialla, founder & CEO of Delos, said in a prepared statement. Glumac will accredit 20 of its staff members through the WELL Accredited Professional program, arming the employees with proficiency in human health and wellness in the built environment, as well as expertise in WELL standards.

The union between Delos and Glumac goes a step further, with Glumac gaining a membership to the Well Living Lab, a collaboration between Delos and the Mayo Clinic. The Well Living Lab is the first research lab focused on examining the link between the built environment and health and wellness.

In the workplace, wellness is taking on increasing importance, extending beyond the focus on such traditional issues as job injuries and indoor air quality. “Forward-looking companies are now infusing wellness-enhancing features into buildings and workspaces and are using workplace design and natural elements to encourage healthy behaviors, collaboration, and creativity among workers,” according to a 2016 report by the Global Wellness Institute. “Developments in architecture, management science, organizational psychology, and environmental science are providing new insights into how workspace design can increase our productivity and happiness at work.”

Delos has spent the last year building up its partnerships. In the fall of 2016, the company joined forces with full-service construction services provider Structure Tone, and formed an alliance with global architecture and design firm HOK. And in April of last year, Delos expanded its partnership with Chinese real estate company Sino-Ocean Land, with Sino-Ocean pledging to seek WELL certification for approximately 26 million square feet of its projects.