Expand Your Expertise on Healthy and Efficient Spaces

As 2021 unfolds, it may be safe to say that indoor environments have never received quite as much attention as they have now, particularly the environmental quality of enclosed spaces.

People who may not have previously recognized the value of your role in the building industry might now be showing greater appreciation, or even pelting you with questions.

Why This Matters: Demand for healthier spaces requires a deepened understanding of what makes indoor environments healthy and efficient.  Trane® offers multiple resources to help you enhance your knowledge. Our parent company, Trane Technologies™, is also offering a new podcast series, From the Inside Out.

At Trane, we’ve focused on the sustainability of indoor environments for some time - and we want to help others see the potential for healthy spaces like we do. We’re offering multiple resources to improve awareness and understanding on what well-designed and efficient spaces can do for the people inside, and the world outside.

Wellsphere™, Trane’s Holistic Approach to Building Wellness
The coronavirus pandemic has amplified the significance and importance of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) – the holistic quality of the conditions inside a building and how they affect occupants. Building owners – along with the engineers and contractors who support them – are now expected to address IEQ and the wellness of building occupants.

To support building owners and others navigating this new IEQ era, Trane recently launched the Wellsphere platform. Designed to offer high-level thinking around IEQ, Wellsphere is Trane’s holistic approach to building wellness for buildings of all types. Read about Wellsphere in our recent blog post.

Trane Technologies Center for Healthy and Efficiency Spaces
In 2020, Trane Technologies, launched the Center for Healthy and Efficient Spaces (CHES)  to convene leading internal and external experts to advance indoor environmental quality (IEQ) policy, strategies and solutions, and establish a roadmap for more resilient and sustainable communities and spaces.

Through idea exchange, research, partnership development and advocacy, the Center will guide our efforts, and those of our industry, on indoor environmental issues affecting the health, productivity and well-being of people – while advancing sustainable outcomes for the world.

Partnering with External Experts
Trane Technologies has also established an Advisory Council on Healthy Spaces made up of leading experts who will support CHES goals with expertise in medicine, epidemiology, academic research, and policy, across building and transport sectors. Council members will advise on accelerating safer, healthier, and more efficient environments in homes, buildings and transport, and on strategies to build resilience for businesses and communities.

In addition, Trane Technologies has become a founding keystone member of the International WELL Building Institute®, whose mission is to improve human health and well-being in buildings.

For more information on the Center for Healthy and Efficient Spaces, click here.

A New Trane Technologies Podcast
We spend on average, more than 90 percent of our time inside[i]  but may not appreciate the significant influence the indoors can have on our bodies and our lives. At Trane Technologies we’ve been pushing what’s possible in science and sustainability of indoor environments for some time – and we aren’t alone in our quest to create better spaces.

We recently launched the Healthy Spaces with Trane Technologies podcast, a series of exchanges that explore the sprawling world of indoor spaces, from the inside out.

Host Rasha Hasaneen, leader of innovation and the CHES at Trane Technologies, joins guest experts and disruptors from our advisory council who are challenging indoor spaces to be better for people and our planet. Some of our recent episodes include:

• At the Intersection of Healthy and Efficient Spaces –(Debut podcast for the series!) Join Hasaneen, as she and podcast guest Scott Tew, sustainability leader and executive director for Trane Technologies' Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability, dive into the realm of possibilities that exist today to build spaces that are good for tomorrow.
• Transparency is the New Green (episode 2) ÷ Podcast guest Memo Cedeno Laurent, associate director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University, shares his unique insights on the foundational elements of a healthy building. His research focuses on the impact of the invisible. Smart buildings need smart occupants – and it all starts with transparency.
• A Symphony without a Conductor (episode 4) - Industry expert Jim Freihaut, associate professor of Architectural Engineering at Penn State, joins Rasha Hasaneen to discuss why advancing the way we look at the air around us is paramount to our health – and how it all starts with how we design, build and operate buildings.

Check out the full podcast series.

[i] Klepeis, Neil E.; Nelson, William C.; Ou, Wayne R.; Robinson, John P.; Tsang, Andy M.; Switzer, Paul; Behar, Joseph V.; Hern, Stephen C., Englemann, William H.; The National Human Activity Survey, A Resource for Assessing Exposure to Environmental Pollutants; page 3

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