Active Design Advisors Inc., an affiliate of the Center for Active Design (CfAD), the sole operator of Fitwel, today announced a strategic capital investment from QuadReal Property Group (QaudReal), a global real estate investment, operating and development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adai will use the investment to further accelerate Fitwel’s technology infrastructure for ease of use at an enterprise scale and increase its ability to generate benchmark data to underpin operational value creation — solidifying health promotion interventions as best practices across the real estate sector. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The investment marks another milestone in the strategic relationship between Adai and QuadReal. In June 2022, QuadReal and the Center for Active Design released a benchmarking report, Health Drives Value in Real Estate, which substantiated a direct correlation between implementing health-promoting strategies and real estate value. A Fitwel Champion, QuadReal has achieved Fitwel certification at entity scale and was the first to implement Fitwel’s Viral Response Module at an entity-wide level, a set of guidelines for building owners and managers to help protect occupants from airborne infectious disease.
“At QuadReal, we strive to be a leader when it comes to leveraging evidence-backed strategies and tools to promote healthy building environments across our assets and the industry more generally. Fitwel is the future and we’re excited to join this strategic group of leading owners and investors,” said Jamie Gray-Donald, Senior Vice President, Sustainability & EHS at QuadReal. “Deepening our support of Adai through a strategic investment is not only emblematic of the success of our collaborative relationship so far, but imperative to improving health outcomes and real estate bottom lines across the global real estate sector in the future.”
QuadReal is the latest real estate industry leader to invest in Adai, joining cutting-edge proptech and ESG investor RET Ventures and industry-leading REIT, Kilroy Realty Corp. Since announcing its first capital raise in October 2022, Adai has undergone a period of foundational growth. It expanded its leadership team with two key hires including Sandy Selinger as Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer and Eric Mason as Chief Marketing Officer; enhanced its technology infrastructure; and launched several new resources that, along with Fitwel’s data-driven platform, provide standardized, research-backed strategies and tools that ensure the real estate industry can respond to tenant demand in the immediate term and future-proof assets in 2023 and beyond.
“As stakeholders increasingly recognize the health and wellbeing of building occupants as a business imperative, they are turning to tools to benchmark and validate data to quantify the value that healthy building strategies are delivering to their properties,” says Joanna Frank, President and CEO, Adai. “To future-proof assets, all aspects of the real estate industry will include data-driven decision-making and a focus on individual as well as societal health; Fitwel is thrilled to use this investment to augment our suite of products that meet these opportunities for the industry.”
Adai’s mission is to transform the real estate industry through its leadership of the healthy building movement. This was accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which served as a reminder that health is what it always has been: a risk. The past year demonstrated that the demand for healthy buildings from investors and individuals is here to stay. Prioritizing health is no longer a reactive market trend, but an established business imperative that is both a risk and opportunity for real estate.
The Fitwel Standard, created by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the General Services Administration (GSA), translates the global public health evidence base into practical design and operational strategies, providing guidelines to be used at the building, community, portfolio, and entity levels. The people-focused platform, which is the only healthy building platform to combine benchmarking, certification, and strategies for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, will be further developed to provide more granular benchmarking capabilities.
Fitwel is the world’s leading certification system committed to building health for all. Generated by expert analysis of 5,600+ academic research studies, Fitwel is implementing a vision for a healthier future where all buildings and communities are enhanced to strengthen health and well-being. Fitwel was originally created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. General Services Administration. The CDC remains the research and evaluation partner for Fitwel. The Center for Active Design (CfAD), a global not-for-profit organization, maintains the Fitwel standard and conducts objective third-party assessments that lead to certified projects. CfAD’s new business unit, Adai (pronounced “a-DAY”), is charged with expanding Fitwel to the global market, administering the program while providing best-in-class customer service and technical support. To learn more about Fitwel, please visit: fitwel.org.
QuadReal is a global real estate investment, operating and development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its assets under management total CAN$67.1 billion. From its foundation in Canada as a full-service real estate operating company, QuadReal has expanded its capabilities to invest in equity and debt in both the public and private markets. QuadReal invests directly, via programmatic partnerships and through operating companies in which it holds an ownership interest.
QuadReal seeks to deliver strong investment returns while creating sustainable environments that bring value to the people and communities it serves. Now and for generations to come.
