Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Dharmesh asks: Dear Sir, What empirical studies are available that can quantify the potential benefits of increased productivity by workers in green buildings? The information I have found is primarily intuitive, not quantifyable... Please assist me if possible. Thank you.

Answer: Dharmesh, you’ve obviously no doubt heard many times that the benefits of working in a green building with improved indoor environmental quality (IEQ). This includes measures such as good indoor air quality (IAQ), views and daylighting increases productivity from such sources as trade publications and USGBC reference guides. It seems that these are the primary sources that we see and it takes a little bit of digging to find articles or papers with empirical and quantifiable data.

The new LEEDv3 BD+C reference guide includes statements such as, “green operations and management… increase workers’ productivity”, “properly executed commissioning can… enhance occupants’ productivity” (through IAQ) and “costs for air-flow monitoring equipment… may be offset by reduced absenteeism, increased occupant productivity, and reduced HVAC energy use.

The reference guide also states that productivity gains of workers in green buildings have shown to be up to 16%, including less absenteeism and higher work quality. With employees’ salaries composing a majority portion of most business operations, it makes good sense to keep staff healthy by improving and maintaining the quality of the indoor environment. Estimated annual savings and productivity gains from improved IEQ in the US are estimated at $6 billion to $14 billion from reduced respiratory disease, $1 billion to $4 billion from reduced allergies and asthma, $10 to $30 billion from reduced sick building syndrome and $20 billion to $160 billion from direct improvements in worker performance unrelated to health.

Of course this data can be somewhat hard to relate you an individual company or project. Several publications I found that may help you put some numbers to your example include the following:

"Greening the Building and the Bottom Line”, Rocky Mountain Institute (1994), available at http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/D94-27_GreeningBuildingBottomLine

“The Big Carrots: Productivity and Health”, Ebtron, Inc. (2003), available at http://www.automatedbuildings.com/news/apr03/articles/ebtron/ebtron.htm

“Do Green Buildings Enhance the Well Being of Workers?", Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D. for ed+c magazine (2001), available at http://www.edcmag.com

Energy Savings and Performance Gains in GSA Buildings: Seven Cost-Effective Strategies, U.S. General Services Administration (2009), available at http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/pbs/GSA_SevenStrategies_090327screen.pdf

You can keep current on other relevant green building articles at the USGBC’s Green Building Research website which includes research publications, LEED project case studies, green building links and more: http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1718.