The Center for Active Design (CfAD) recently announced the creation of Active Design Advisors, Inc., a business unit designed to help grow and drive implementation of Fitwel, its healthy building certification system. As demand for wellness real estate spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, so too did Fitwel registrations. The new business unit — its shortened acronym Adai is pronounced "a-DAY" — will be responsible for promoting and administering the Fitwel certication, as well as maintaining Fitwel's customer service.
Following its 2012 launch under New York City's Bloomberg Administration, CfAD will continue translating the global public health evidence base into practical and implementable design and development solutions and will retain responsibility for objective third-party Fitwel certication. The organization also will continue leveraging its partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to maintain the Fitwel standard, reviewing and updating it regularly with input from academic and industry advisory groups to ensure the standard remains both rigorous and practical to apply across portfolios of real estate assets.
CfAD will continue to develop reports and white papers to educate and empower the marketplace. CfAD President and CEO Joanna Frank said the formation of Adai will help the organization meet current and future demand and drive greater impact.
"This is exactly the right moment for us to be launching Adai," she said. "Today Fitwel certified projects improve the lives of more than a million people across the globe. But how do we get to 10 million, to 100 million? We want to invest in people and technology to meet the demands of the real estate industry for ESG-driven solutions. Not only will Adai help us grow our capacity to keep accelerating the healthy building movement. It will help us maintain the highest standards of customer service and expand our platform to ensure we truly are responding to our clients' needs."
Dan Hounsell is senior editor, facility group.
