Health in Buildings Roundtable

Workshop

Health in Buildings Roundtable: Focus on What Matters - Improving Ventilation for Health and Productivity

September 17, 2025

10:00 AM - 5:00 PM (ET)

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Agenda

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Materials

Presentation Slides

About

The health impacts of infectious disease and a host of other indoor and outdoor conditions of concern have elevated national attention to commercial building ventilation systems. This one day workshop will introduce GSALink CO2 research findings from over 30 large commercial buildings to support collaborative discussion on the importance of six actions that matter most relative to Indoor Air Quality for Health and Productivity.

The first discussion (O2 Matters) will center on moving beyond minimum outside air standards to increasing ventilation (with effective filtration) for human health and productivity. The second discussion (CO2 Matters) will center on the ongoing efficacy and value of CO2 monitoring at the air handling unit and in the zone as a measure of ventilation effectiveness. The third discussion (Records Matter) will evaluate the importance of long term data records from BAS settings, Energy and CO2 sensors towards the development of KPI to ensure effective ventilation incommercial buildings. The fourth discussion (Faults Matter) will identify faults/alerts/sparks that may be critical to ventilation delivery, both with outside air and clean air. The fifth discussion (Economizer Matters) will identify the positive contributions of Economizer operations for both IAQ and Energy, albeit seasonal. If time permits, the closing discussion will open the floor to innovations in HVAC and passive systems that may be critical to improving ventilation in buildings.

Leaders in Public Health, HVAC and Building Design Practices, Industry, and Facilities Management and Policy are welcome to attend and participate in interactive discussions on the importance of outside air, CO2 sensors, fault management, and economizer operation, towards healthier and more productive commercial buildings.

Contact

Cameron Oskvig

coskvig@nas.edu

Location

National Academy of Sciences Building

2101 Constitution Ave NW

Washington DC 20418, USA

Disclaimer

It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

Meeting

GSA / Health in Buildings Roundtable / Federal Facilities Council - Circadian-Effective Lighting

August 20, 2024

9:00 AM - 2:00 PM (ET)

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Discussion

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Agenda

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About

Circadian lighting for better sleep at night and improved performance during the day.

Lighting for buildings has mainly focused on visual performance, but the often missing, and perhaps the more important aspect of lighting, is its ability to synchronize our behavior and physiology to local sunrise and sunset. Without that synchrony between our internal biological clock and the external light-dark cycle, we will encounter inconsistent and disrupted sleep patterns. Poor sleep can lead to poor performance during the day and, in the long run, can compromise our health.

The science paints a clear picture that lighting, when given at the correct time, intensity, spectrum, and duration, improves sleep and ultimately provides human health benefits. Facility owners, standards bodies, and organizations managing building rating systems have taken note, but there are only a few examples from the commercial sector where lighting has been designed to promote better sleep and health for occupants. Despite the science, today’s lighting building operations are still guided by energy codes and lighting recommendations based solely upon visual performance.

Why is that?

This will be a virtual interactive session with plenty of opportunities for dialogue and discussion amongst manufacturers, building owners, academic experts, and building certification system owners to explore that question. We will talk about GSA’s views on the importance of electric lighting and daylighting in buildings for regulating the timing of our biological clock. We will also LISTEN to the different stakeholders who are concerned with designing and implementing circadian-effective lighting. In particular, we want to hear about any perceived barriers that limit broader implementation of circadian-effective lighting. Our goal is to identify these barriers and lay out a plan to overcome them.

Major points to cover:

Scientific evidence of the beneficial effects of lighting on sleep
Importance of light reaching the eyes
While there are challenges to adoption, these are not insurmountable

Contact

Brittany Segundo

bsegundo@nas.edu

Disclaimer

It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

Meeting

Health in Buildings Roundtable / Federal Facilities Council - Clean Air as a Public Health Strategy: What are the Priorities?

May 21, 2024

9:00 AM - 4:30 PM (ET)

Past

Materials

About

Together, we can promote strategies we know will improve indoor air quality and fill gaps in knowledge about how to improve the performance of building ventilation systems in existing buildings.

Ventilation systems are critical to maintaining the health, comfort, and performance of people in buildings. Recently, the pandemic, risk of wildfire, and other contingencies made clean air in buildings salient to the public in a way it had never been before. Facility owners, standards bodies, and organizations managing building rating systems took note and took action. Still, today’s building operations are guided more by research on occupant comfort and immediate safety than a focus on human performance or long-term, chronic conditions. Operations and Maintenance (O&M) activities are widely under-funded and under-resourced across the public and private sectors. Additionally, the immediate concerns with COVID-19 may be fading, even as the risks of future pandemics and extreme environmental events remain present.

GSA worked with experts in government, industry and academia to identify a set of actions to improve HVAC operations and priorities for research to improve our ability to address these risks. The agency is now considering the most effective way to leverage its scarce resources and to seek partners to expand the industry’s capacity to fill the gaps in knowledge we identified. GSA will host this workshop to refine its plans for research and to recruit other building owners and relevant organizations to do similar work.

This will be an interactive session with plenty of opportunities for dialogue and discussion amongst building owners, academic experts, and building certification system owners to explore proposals for field research being considered by GSA. The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) will host the session through its Federal Facilities Council.

Major points to cover:

Scientific foundation linking human health, comfort and performance outcomes to levels of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) pollutants
Potential for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to improve ventilation performance
GSA’s proposal to pilot KPIs and ASHRAE Standard 241 in federally-owned buildings
Desire by other federal agencies to conduct pilots to expand and enrich this research

The Federal Facilities Council previously organized a webinar series -- GSA’s Health in Buildings Research Program. This workshop continues the discussions around GSA's research and practices. Presentations from the previous webinar series are linked below:

Contact

Brittany Segundo

bsegundo@nas.edu

Location

National Academy of Sciences Building

2101 Constitution Ave NW

Washington DC 20418, USA

Disclaimer

It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

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Health in Buildings Roundtable