Synapse Special Issue: The Impact of Buildings on Public Health

LABBC’s Executive Director Dave Hodgins in conversation with Kilroy Realty’s SVP of Sustainability Sara Neff on the impact of commercial buildings on public health.

As businesses prepare to reopen, health and safety are top of mind for building owners, managers, and tenants.  How do we keep sustainability initiatives moving when everyone is focused on the more immediate emergency?   

LABBC’s Executive Director David Hodgins spoke with Sara Neff, Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Kilroy Realty, about the impacts of the pandemic on her work, and how she’s adapting her approach to the new reality. 

In their conversation, Sara provides insights into how COVID-19 is affecting Kilroy’s corporate sustainability goals, steps Kilroy is taking to prepare for reopening, engaging tenants, the impact of buildings on health and wellbeing, and how their forward-looking approach has set them up for this challenging time. 

“When we think about what impacts the environment, we think about our cars, or big industry, and we don’t really think about office buildings. But they’re a major contributor, and to health as well.

Now, we're thinking of buildings as potential way to transmit a virus, so the major takeaway is to keep a triple-bottom-line understanding of where buildings operate in our ecosystem.”

Sara Neff | SVP of Sustainability, Kilroy Realty

Dave Hodgins: Hi, Sara - great to connect, as always.  Can you start us off by providing some framing around Kilroy's sustainability goals?

Sara Neff: At Kilroy, we have the goal of being carbon neutrally in our operations by the end of this year (2020). We have targets for energy reduction, water reduction, waste diversion, and onsite and offsite renewables.  There are a lot of environmental goals, as well as social goals around diversity and inclusion, supply chain -- we're engaging on ESG factors generally.  A lot was going on before this crisis hit.  

Dave Hodgins: How is this crisis, and the fallout — the shutdowns — impacting your sustainability work at Kilroy?  

Sara Neff: Well, the logistics are certainly impacting my work, working full time and somehow homeschooling two kids full time. There are just not enough hours in the day. But we're not letting up on any of our sustainability goals.  

We’re still going to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of the year. Everything with energy and water is very wacky right now because no one is in our in our buildings, but I have no intention of letting up on anything environmentally.  

We might miss the waste target, but beyond that, for energy and water, we have reductions. The strange thing has been having to become an expert in virus transmission.  

I'm running our response to COVID for the office development portfolio and I am assisting with the response for our existing portfolio, as well as for residential and retail development. 

Dave Hodgins: It’s fantastic to hear that you guys are not taking your eye off the ball. In the near term, could there be some opportunities while buildings are empty to accelerate certain projects? How are you guys making lemonade out of this situation right now? 

Sara Neff: I've been trying to get retrofits done now while it’s easier – there was a while we could only do exterior retrofits because no one was allowed in the building and now that they're under a limited capacity, the vendors are allowed inside so we’re trying to accelerate our interior lighting, which will be set before we expect full occupancy. 

Dave Hodgins: I’ve been trying to keep up with guidelines coming out from ASHRAE about increased ventilation rates and longer hours, which would obviously drive loads and consumption.   

Sara Neff: It's a huge concern. You’re not running ventilation 24/7, but the priority is air filtration and considering all of the circumstances that would allow germs to grow. For instance, what are the humidity levels? Do you want it between 40 to 60 percent? We’re starting there before rushing to turn the ventilation all the way up. And what we're finding so far is that the adjustments are already providing 30 percent more outside air, as recommended by ASHRAE. 

There's not an additional benefit to increasing outside air even more though, as that's something that can have a major cost and environmental impact on the building. So, we're trying to be smart about it.  

The thing we're going to see is just needing to run the HVAC longer because people are going to be staggering shifts. Some people will start their shifts at 8, some people at 10 or some will start their shifts at noon. And we have to make sure that there's air for all of them at the same ventilation rate. I think we'll see energy go up as a result of that, if not anything else. 

Dave Hodgins:  What are some of the specific technologies that you're considering right now, at this intersection of health, building automation, and efficiency? 

Sara Neff: The major thing I'm looking for right now is air sensor technology that will help us know when a building needs more ventilation and if there's not enough outside air and adjust those levels. Other than that, I really focus on procuring all the third-party verification work, of the indoor air and water quality, and the existence of things that would indicate that germs easily grow on surface in the building. 

Dave Hodgins:  You mentioned having to become an “expert” in health and virus transmission. What is the conversation you’re having on the link between buildings and health?  

Sara Neff: We started our health program back in 2015, before it was particularly popular. After reading studies on the impacts of air quality in cognitive function, I felt like health needed to be a major focus. I had no idea that air in our buildings could have such an impact, not just in causing things like ‘sick building syndrome,’ or causing physical illness, but the idea that a building can have so much of an impact on productivity and overall well-being. 

We had the first Fitwel certified units in the world, and 43 percent of our portfolio is Fitwel certified. So, when this all came, we were well prepared to incorporate new practices into our existing operations. 

Dave Hodgins:  Does that mean you expect that the pandemic won't have as much of an impact on you and your tenants, since Kilroy was prepared earlier on? 

Sara Neff: We’ll find out. I will leave that to the testing, but I am expecting the results will be that we are running our buildings excellently and we’ll make changes if need be. We have positive, ongoing relationships with air quality testing folks, for example, and the procurement process, insurance, and all of that stuff was already in place – you know, the things that can take a very, very long time.  

Dave Hodgins:  With things evolving so quickly, what are you reading these days to stay on top of things?  

Sara Neff: I feel like I'm never not on a webinar, I'm either listening to a webinar or participating in a webinar, and that’s how I'm staying on top of everything. Also, the sustainability community has always been very open, and this time is no different. We are getting on the phone with everybody through my job and the real estate investment trust, and we're sharing our best practices.  

The other thing we are doing is actively engaging with our tenants. For instance, later this afternoon, I have a call with one of my tenant’s sustainability teams to discuss what they're looking for from their landlord. I think right now a lot of businesses’ plans for coronavirus are focused on HR issues –  who is coming in, what time, if somebody is furloughed, and when they’ll come back. I think for tenants, the building is not the major area of focus right now, but we want to make sure that when they are able to focus on the building, we're ready for them.  

Dave Hodgins:  Given that it is still very dynamic, what are some good ideas that you see coming out of this so far? Any common threads? 

Sara Neff: The overall concept that our buildings can have an impact beyond just being a place where we live and work, I really hope that thinking stays. You and I have tried for a long time to convince people that buildings had any impact on the environment, which is still a very hard concept for a lot of people to grasp. 

When we think about what impacts the environment, we think about our cars, or big industry, and we don’t really think about office buildings. But they’re a major contributor, and to health as well. Now, we're thinking of buildings as a potential way to transmit a virus, so the major takeaway is to keep a triple-bottom-line understanding of where buildings operate in our ecosystem.(Love this as a quote) 

Dave Hodgins:  How we talk about this is important. To your point about trying to make that connection in people's minds between buildings and climate, or other environmental impacts – is the way that you talk about your work changing in this context, or evolving in some way? 

Sara Neff: It's evolving in the sense that I certainly didn't have pandemic preparedness as part of my job description two months ago. The environmental work, I'm happy to say, is not particularly changing, but I think the health piece of it is getting a lot more holistic. Before this crisis, we were really focused on active design and air quality. And that was basically what health meant to us. Now it's a lot more than that, right? Now, we're also dealing with virus transmission, water quality, humidity concerns, and all these things that I hadn't really explicitly included in our health programs are now included.  

Dave Hodgins:  It’ll be interesting to see how buildings that don't have the level of sophistication in terms of automation, zone level controls and so forth come out in all of this. It seems like the fact that Kilroy has been ahead of the curve in so many ways - operationally, and investing into your buildings - should put you on better footing. 

Sara Neff: I hope so, although this experience has been humbling. I would have predicted a lot more reduction in energy than I'm seeing in our buildings. On average, I’m seeing somewhere between a 25 and 35 percent energy reduction, even though it's a 90 percent decrease in occupancy in many cases. And that’s because when you have just a few people in the building, you're still having to provide them air. And you don't have the kind of zoning that allows you to provide air to only one desk, instead it’s the whole floor. 

Dave Hodgins:  A ton of data is going to spin out of this that will be fascinating.  What is something that you believe to be true that everyone else thinks is crazy? 

Sara Neff: To me, it’s the concept mentioned earlier –that buildings have a major impact on our health and the environment – more so, potentially, than the food we eat or other things that we would think of as very, very much part of our health. People always think that's totally nuts, and yet, that is the case.  

Dave Hodgins:  So, what's your outlook? What are you most optimistic about, what silver lining do you see here? 

Sara Neff: The silver lining is that we don't seem to be alone in maintaining our environmental commitments. So far, all the real estate companies, even the retail ones that have had to cut a lot of staff, have kept their sustainability team. I think that’s really great news.  

I was just listening to a Bloomberg poll in our nation that says, yes, there's a bit of a slowdown in certain parts of the market, but impact investing is going really, really strong right now. You know, green bonds, social bonds. So I think the idea is people within our industry realize that while we are in a crisis, and we really need to focus on that right now, climate change is still happening and it's a larger global crisis, in terms of potential impact on human lives. 

I don't see that letting up from any sector, not from investors, not from rating agencies. That makes me feel very optimistic.