Achieving the WELL Health-Safety Rating across LaSalle’s assets

Client’s Objectives

LaSalle Investment Management (LaSalle) is a leading real estate investment management firm. Its portfolio of assets covers logistics, retail, residential, and more.

To provide its tenants with the assurance of healthy, safe, and comfortable spaces, LaSalle embarked on a process to obtain WELL Health-Safety (H&S) Ratings for its assets in Japan, China, Australia, and Singapore. 

JLL’s Approach and Solutions

To this end, JLL provided WELL certification consultancy services to LaSalle, including identifying feature requirements, developing a compliance strategy, hosting workshops, and arranging certification coordination. We also compiled and submitted individual feature reports and documents to the satisfaction of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which verifies the WELL H&S Rating.

The scope and extent of this project presented some challenges. The first of which was aligning a large network of stakeholders that spanned asset managers, property managers, and third-party vendors. JLL also supported LaSalle on quantifying “wellness” elements, which can be difficult to standardise given their nature.

During the execution of the WELL H&S Rating action plan, JLL worked closely with LaSalle’s Asset Management teams to ensure operational policies, maintenance protocols, and emergency plans are aligned with IWBI’s requirements. At the same time, we designed a cost and time effective certification strategy that enabled assets to be qualified for WELL H&S Rating 2021 Certification within 6 months. We also verified the assets’ completeness and accuracy before the final submission to IWBI.

Outcome

In one of our key sustainability projects at the Shanghai International Plaza, the LaSalle Asset Management team and the JLL Sustainability Services team successfully obtained WELL H&S Rating for the building shortly after the completion of its renovation. The two teams formulated operation strategies to ensure the building uses energy sustainably; LaSalle further carried out asset level sustainability surveys to facilitate future improvements. On top of that, LaSalle conducted community wellbeing initiatives within the asset – including craft workshops, first aid training, and health seminars. More than 70 activities were held in under two years!

JLL’s extensive experience in LEED, WELL, and WELL H&S Rating was instrumental in connecting LaSalle’s regional teams, as we helped LaSalle standardise the process for operating within the WELL H&S Rating framework. Our team also offered LaSalle consultancy services on new WELL programmes such as WELL Performance Ratings and WELL at Scale. In total, we assessed 55 assets in Asia Pacific and guided 41 of them to achieve the WELL H&S Rating certification in 2021. Along the way, we enabled LaSalle to track wellness parameters in a consistent way as it progresses towards its ESG goals.