Healthy Buildings

Joseph  Allen; John D. Macomber

Book | 2020

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

Abstract

By the time you reach 80, you will have spent 72 years of your life indoors. Like it or not, humans have become an indoor species. This means that the people who design, build, and maintain our buildings can have a major impact on our health.
Ever feel tired during a meeting? That’s because most offices and conference rooms are not bringing in enough fresh air. When that door opens, it literally breathes life back into the room. But there is a lot more acting on your body that you can’t feel or see. From our offices and homes to our schools and hospitals, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized influence on our performance and well-being. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick—dragging down profits in the process.
Charismatic pioneers of the healthy building movement who have paired up to combine the cutting-edge science of Harvard’s School of Public Health with the financial know-how of the Harvard Business School, Joseph Allen and John Macomber lay out the science of healthy buildings and make the business case for owners, developers, and CEOs. They reveal the 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building and show how tracking health performance indicators with smart technology can boost performance and create economic value. While the “green” building movement tackled energy, waste, and water, the new healthy building movement focuses on the most important (and expensive) asset of any business: its people.

Keywords: architecture; real estate development; air pollution; air quality; public health; Productivity gains; Buildings and Facilities; Health; Pollutants; Performance Productivity; Construction Industry;

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Citation:

Allen, Joseph, and John D. Macomber. Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020.

Healthy buildings and superior air quality are increasingly important since people now spend so much time indoors. Indoor spaces drive performance and productivity. Commercial real estate landlords and investors are responding to the demands of sophisticated tenants and end users by making investment choices around indoor air quality and certification, and related expectations for increased rent or increased occupancy. It's anticipated that these learnings will extend to other situations including offices, schools, hospitals, factories, and homes. This case investigates the tradeoffs in several engineering, marketing, and finance decisions. The setting is a billion dollar premier new office building on Park Avenue in New York City, designed by the eminent architecture firm Foster + Partners. The decision factors in the case include health information from CogFX and 9 Foundations of Healthy Buildings research from the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health.

Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2020

Rotoplas: Bringing More and Better Water

John D. Macomber and Carla Larangeira

Private companies were being turned to for potable water in the world’s megacities due to impacts of climate change including droughts and flooding. Mexico City had endured several water-related crises, with its population suffering from floods, droughts, water shutoffs and disease. Although some access to piped water services was practically universal for Mexico City residents, services were limited or discontinuous. An accommodation that most households had made was in purchasing and installing a water holding tank on the roof or in the ground, with Rotoplás, a Mexican based water product and services provider, enjoying more than 55% of tank market share in Mexico.

Rotoplás had ventured into wastewater treatment and recycling in 2016 with the acquisition of Sytesa, a design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance business for wastewater management for industry and businesses. Market segments included lighter corporate users like shopping malls and heavy users like food processors or mining companies, and maybe “water as a service” would also end up as the place to be to supplement and assist homeowner associations and even municipal governments. However, services revenue was today a tiny fraction of overall cash flow at Rotoplás. The presence of larger competitors like Suez and Veolia and as well as unfavorable pricing and regulations could potentially slow down future growth. Could Rotoplás services be part of the solution to the water crisis in the nation’s capital? Or was the situation too intractable for even this local champion company to tackle? What pricing and regulatory changes might lead to financial and technical solutions for Mexico City’s water crisis?

Keywords: water supply; water management; Finance; Infrastructure; Urban Development; Latin America; Mexico;

Citation:

Macomber, John D., and Carla Larangeira. "Rotoplas: Bringing More and Better Water." Harvard Business School Case 220-064, February 2020. View Details

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Richard Anderson took the helm of Amtrak in 2017 after leading a successful turnaround at Delta Airlines. Amtrak is a US state owned enterprise with about $3.5 bn in annual revenue (and a large operating loss) that is responsible for substantial segments of passenger rail travel across the United States. In 2019, Anderson has been called before Congress to explain and justify his capital spending plans for the rail carrier. He has to consider, among other topics: Rural services that are important but lose money; historically important long distance routes liked by Congress and which also lose money; new routes between growing city to city pairs; climate change and the impact of floods, washouts, and extreme heat; and the possibility of Amtrak participating in attractive new Transit-Oriented Development opportunities. Congress will be presented with options ranging from halving the annual subsidy to doubling it; and whether to focus on maintaining the money losing constituent serving routes or focus on the geographies that have the most opportunity to ease road congestion and stimulate economic growth. Amtrak leadership must also evaluate whether to rebuild lines washed out by hurricanes, how to anticipate future natural events that threaten physical infrastructure, and where to build for tnext decades of service. Where should Anderson invest and where should he divest?

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Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity

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