Building wellness revolution continues

Floth has become the first company to achieve a six star NABERS Indoor Environment rating, as the wellness revolution in the building sector continues.

The NABERS Indoor Environment tool measures factors such as air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, office layout and occupant satisfaction. On the NABERS scale, one star indicates poor performance, while a score of six demonstrates market leadership.

Floth is a building services and engineering consultancy practice with offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth and Jakarta. The company was awarded a six star rating for their new head office based in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

Anthony Marklund, ESD principal at Floth, said that the result is very pleasing.

“We care about buildings, moreover we care about the people who work and live in buildings. At Floth we strive for best practice and wanted to demonstrate leadership by caring for our own people first.

“NABERS Indoor Environment provides office building owners, managers and occupants with simple and reliable benchmarking of operational Indoor Environment Quality. A third-party occupant satisfaction survey is combined with spot measurements in the space. The rating report now gives clear advice on performance against the IEQ areas.

“Happily, our six star outcome proves that a highly energy efficient and economical building can also provide an excellent indoor environment.”

Tom Grosskopf, director of the Metro Branch at NSW OEH, said that the number of ratings had been slowly increasing over the past few years. Many stakeholders are also predicting that demand will continue to rise sharply as property owners seek to position themselves as a healthy workplace.

“It is important that we address both the social and environmental impact of buildings,” Grosskopf said.

“Better indoor environment quality in our workplaces will lead to healthier, more productive staff. Healthy productive staff will lead to a more competitive economy, and more vibrant communities.”

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Alija