Since its inception, the standard has been applied to office buildings, industrial complexes and now, residential structures, boosting its contribution to the resilience of a wide range of built environments against the health threats of today and beyond.

"Last year people probably spent more time at home than ever before, but while we’ve seen changes in the way offices, transport hubs and shops are managed to keep people safe, there’s been little discussion about what should happen in a multi-residential setting."

Located in the prestigious borough of Westminster, One Palace Place incorporates 35 private apartments with a 24/7 concierge for residents, alongside a 312-seat theatre, a 120-seat studio, as well as a restaurant and bar open to the wider public. 

"This is not about creating sterile spaces, but about making sensible design and management changes. IMMUNE™ certification shows our commitment as a professional property and asset manager to do everything we can to keep our customers healthy and well”

Navana Property Group successfully implemented a large majority of the 135 measures included in the IMMUNE™ Assessment Scoring Index, such as aligning its policies to the IMMUNE™ standards at a corporate level, especially in areas such as business continuity, recovery, and wellbeing or providing additional training to its onsite team and the dedicated IMMUNE™ Steward.

80% of respondents believe that the return to office life is good for people, both personally and professionally. In addition, almost 43% consider that the main benefit of returning to the office is a better separation between work and personal life and 36% point out that the office contributes significantly to better interaction with colleagues and managers.

Any building owner or tenant can consult the list of measures and implement them - entirely or partially, as needed - in their workspace and follow the Assessment Scoring Index to independently evaluate the level of resilience of the assessed building against health threats.

“People have to feel more confident that the workplace will be safer for them than they will be at home,” Tudor says. “We already have green buildings, but we want to work towards healthy buildings as well.”

At Navana, we have been exploring how standards like IMMUNE, which was initially created for workplaces, can be deployed in residential schemes. This considers how smarter design through the use of different materials or building layouts can help reduce the spread of viruses.

The Healthy by Design Building Institute (HDBI) has awarded Navana Property Group IMMUNE Building Standard™ certification for One Palace Place, a luxury apartment building managed by the company in central London.  It is the first time that a residential asset has achieved certification.

“This is not about creating sterile spaces, but about making sensible design and management changes. IMMUNE certification shows our commitment as a professional property and asset manager to do everything we can to keep our customers healthy and well,” added Fitzgerald. 

The onsite team and dedicated IMMUNE™ steward benefited from additional training, PPE equipment for protection and intensified cleaning protocols in the staff welfare areas. Navana Property Group also aligned operational policies to the IMMUNE™ standard both at corporate level, as well as for residents, visitors and contractors, especially in areas like business continuity, recovery and wellbeing.

Healthy by Design Building Institute (HDBI) has certified the world’s first residential property with the IMMUNE Building Standard™. One Palace Place, a luxury residential building located in London, UK, and managed by Navana Property Group, was awarded the IMMUNE™ - Strong label, marking the first residential property to receive the distinction.

Predicting how long the working-from-home/hybrid working model will last is difficult, he said, but Tudor took a guess: “Hybrid working will stay for a while….maybe for two or three years after the pandemic.”

This is a standard developed in response to the pandemic, showing how to re-engineer and redesign business premises. The standard has been used for offices across the UK and continental Europe, including in Bucharest, Romania, at Building H3 in the West Gate Business District, fully occupied by Ericsson.

The pandemic has changed the Romanians' perception about their office, with health now at the forefront. Thus, 43% of Romanian employees believe that the main feature of their offices should be a healthy space, based on technologies and procedures designed to protect people's health

We have to build trust because first of all, we have to convince people to come back to work in the offices and then we have to convince them that whatever is happening outside, they will be better protected inside the buildings.

As COVID pushed the Community Managers to be strategic overseers with a lend for long-term outcomes, we explained the importance of an IMMUNE Steward on-site, inside and outside the pandemic. Enjoy an insightful discussion addressing sustainability, healthy buildings and the role of community managers in this new era.

Interview with Mr. Liviu Tudor on London Live TV.

“We need to gain people’s confidence, to reassure them that we’ve done everything to protect the building’s health so as to protect theirs, and we want to give them as much information as possible,” said a representative of the company in Romania, who wished to remain anonymous.

Anyone whose head flashes red on the screen, however, is whisked away by a plastic-gloved “immune steward” into a nearby quarantine room: a glass box with a panic button and its own internal ventilation system shut off from the rest of the building. 

A “Viruskiller” apparatus on the wall, boasting three levels of fan strength, promises to remove anything nasty such as pollutants, mould or spores that may be infecting the air, with back up provided by a sanitising UV light on the wall.

The office would inevitably have to accommodate three different kinds of people – the ones who are keen to return no matter what, the ones who need a degree of flexibility of working from home, and the ones who may be hesitant or vulnerable. 

Coupled with the absolute necessity for the hospitality sector to welcome guests back to physical premises on a pre-pandemic scale, drives the notion that business leaders and property owners must redesign their infrastructure to combat the most pressing fears, concerns and challenges posed by the pandemic.

Almost 76% of employees believe that a certified building can limit health risks for them and their families and also help reduce the level of stress they feel as a result of the pandemic. Currently, 70% of them are still concerned about the risks of spreading viruses and bacteria fuelled by inefficient ventilation systems or inadequate sanitation of surfaces in their offices.

Therefore, it became apparent we needed a strong scientific solution to help society get back safely into work and office environments – if we were ever to return back to a pre-pandemic normal. The IMMUNE Building Standard™ was the product of this endeavour, developed in Romania in 2020, mid-COVID-19 pandemic.

The standard has been developed to help buildings including offices, logistics and industrial sites, sports and recreation centres, educational institutions, retail, hospitality and residential properties to re-open and operate safely.

When news of the pandemic first arose, it soon became clear that life as we knew it would change. Over one year on, that early interpretation has proven to be accurate, with the virus radically changing the way we live, work and interact. Excepting some medical facilities, no commercial building was prepared to face a pandemic.

We need to create healthy buildings for people and redesign the offices to regain their trust in coming back to offices. This is why we created the IMMUNE Building Standard™. Listen to the full interview for Times Radio in the context of returning to the office safely.

"People have to feel more confident that the workplace will be safer for them than they will be at home," Tudor says. "We already have green buildings, but we want to work towards healthy buildings as well."

While a proposed return to the office and wider opening of hospitality venues has been deemed a hugely positive step for property stakeholders, it is one that bears obvious and immediate challenges as the UK public remain cautious about a so-called return to ‘normal’ livelihood procedures.

Interview with Mr. Liviu Tudor, President of EPF on how offices can prepare to welcome back employees / safe return to work and AI / Automation at the workplace due to the pandemic.

For nearly three-quarters of respondents to the Genesis Property survey, a healthy building protects people's health through complex sanitary measures, and more than two-thirds believe that the health of a building is primarily based on air and water filtration systems.

In this op-ed, Mr Liviu Tudor tells CEO Today that the recovery of city centres and the economy relies on a return to the office but warns that businesses must prioritise their employees’ safety and well-being in doing so.

Interview with Mr. Liviu Tudor on Building H3, fully occupied by Ericsson being awarded the IMMUNE Building Standard™ certification, IMMUNE™- Resilient.

Mr. Liviu Tudor, president of the European Property Federation was invited on the World Business Report at BBC World Service to examine the future of the office in a post-pandemic world and to discuss IMMUNE™.

The IMMUNE Building Standard™ is featured at pages 110 & 111 in the interview with Gavin Bonner.

The building, operated by Swedish telecoms provider Ericsson, is designed to monitor potential health threats and has been specially designed to minimise viral spread, was the brainchild of Genesis Property founder and President of the European Property Federation, Liviu Tudor.

After a nine-month, €375,000 retrofit, an office building in Bucharest, Romania has become the first building to achieve the toughest certification of the Immune Building Standard, developed to guard occupants against communicable diseases like Covid-19.

The achievement of the IMMUNE^TM – Resilient certification follows a nine-month implementation project initiated by Genesis Property, a reputed Class A office developer and a leading member of the European Property Federation. 

Building H3 in Bucharest’s West Gate Business District, fully occupied by Ericsson, earned the IMMUNE -Resilient label, becoming the world’s first building to achieve the highest certification level of the IMMUNE Building Standard.

The standard incorporates a network of devices, technologies, specialised equipment, dedicated personnel and amenities, promoting operational and health rules focused on spaces where occupants and visitors interact.

The IMMUNE Building Standard^TM, through the Healthy by Design Building Institute (HDBI) in Brussels, is an evidence based, third-party certified rating for the built environment, focusing on providing building operators with the tools and strategy to monitor, communicate and adjust the health of the indoor physical space, with an efficient response protocol in case of viral, bacteriological, or toxicological events.

With the IMMUNE™ Digital Twin Display, a digital mirror of the building, occupants can access immunity-boosting indicators such as daily improvements of indoor air quality, carbon dioxide or humidity levels and other relevant data about the IMMUNE™ equipment throughout the building at all times. 

The office of the future will be a place of complex, multi-level human interaction, supporting innovative actions with great added value. Of course, people are also waiting for sanitary measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, measures that we have included in The IMMUNE Building Standard™ in order to offer them trust and peace of mind.

Peggy and Liviu Tudor, founder and president, Genesis Property, discuss the immune building standard. He explains that an immune building is prepared to perform well in the face of a threat, how devices, sensors, machine learning, and big data can help create immune-rated buildings and how the technology can be implemented in preexisting buildings.

The IMMUNE-Strong certification of Prolojik Limited’s headquarters is based on a complex assessment process conducted by Build Green, an independent authorised building assessor and a contributor to the development of the standard.

“The IMMUNE Building Standard is gaining momentum and sees great interest from leaders across the world who seek to reduce Covid-19 effects on built environments and to sustainably contribute to creating the healthy buildings of the future,” said Liviu Tudor, Founder of Genesis Property.