Healthy Buildings & Employee Performance: The Next Revolution ?

Do you want to optimize your
employees performance by 299%?  Increase
cognitive ability in strategy development by 288%?

Yes! Of course, we all would love to
fully optimize ourselves and those around us to maximize our potential and
impact on the world.  What if the answer
was all around us, literally allowing us to live, and also invisible.  According to new research focused on indoor
air quality in the work place, there is a tremendous opportunity to move beyond
“green” buildings and ensure we work in “healthy”
buildings.

 

The COGfx Study, while limited to 24
participants, demonstrated that improved indoor environmental quality doubled
cognitive testing results in buildings with enhanced ventilation versus
conventional buildings.  The study
distinguished between three building types; Conventional, Green, and Enhanced
Green.  Within these building types the
focus benchmarks were Carbon Dioxide levels in parts per million (ppm), ventilation
rates expressed in cubic feet per minute (CFM) per person, and Volatile Organic
Compounds (VOC) in micrograms per cubic meter. It’s also worth noting that
building used was already a LEED Platinum certified facility, thus there’s
likely more room for increased scores when comparing older existing buildings.

 

The study explores the decrease in
energy efficiency, which could be viewed as a negative, however relative to the
increase in employee productivity and lost time due to sickness the savings can
be dwarfed.  The noted increased cost per
occupant in energy consumption is $400/year, however the study suggest a 6 x
return in sick leave reductions alone relative to the increased energy
cost.  Factor in the potential for increased
productivity for one of the biggest operational cost for any company, the
people, and the energy penalty is worth the investment.

While Melink is focused on energy
efficiency, we’re also not blind to the impacts of IAQ and built our corporate
HQ as a LEED Gold facility, later upgraded to Platinum.  In addition to the LEED standards, we also
monitor in door CO₂ levels via sensors and increase ventilation
rates via a HVAC purge sequence once the room exceeds 800 ppm in CO₂.  On average, the general office area CO₂
levels hover around 600 ppm and are aided by the addition of live plants which
produced an average drop of 100 ppm in CO₂.

This focus on IAQ has led us to the development of a new product, Melink PositiV, to help ensure proper positive building pressure and CO₂ levels in commercial buildings. The aim is to provide a simple solution for one of the biggest problems in all buildings, restaurants and retail locations; negative building pressure.  The standalone device will monitor pressure, temperature, relative humidity, and CO₂ levels and provide a picture of building health and trends.