Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Research into indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and its effects on health, comfort, and performance of occupants is becoming an increasing priority as interest in high performance buildings and organizational productivity advances. Facility managers are interested in IEQ's close relationship to energy use in facilities and employers want to enhance employee comfort and productivity, reduce absenteeism and health costs, and reduce or even eliminate litigation by providing excellent indoor environments to employees. The increasing interest in this field as architects, engineers, facility managers, building investors, health officials, jurists, and the public seek simple and general guidelines on creating safe, healthy, and comfortable indoor environment, has put additional pressure on the research community. In the last twenty years, IEQ researchers have advanced our understanding of the influence of IEQ on health and productivity, but many uncertainties remain. Consequently, there is a critical need to expand research in this field, particularly research that is highly multidisciplinary. In addition, there is a strong need to better communicate knowledge currently documented in research publications to building professionals in order to encourage implementation of designs and practices that enhance health and productivity. Against this background, the Indoor Health and Productivity (IHP) project aims to develop a fuller understanding of the relationships between physical attributes of the workplace (e.g. thermal, lighting, ventilation, and air quality) in non-residential and non-industrial buildings and the health and productivity of occupants. A particular emphasis of the IHP project is to identify and communicate key research findings, with their practical and policy implications, to policymakers, design practitioners, facility managers, construction and energy services companies, and building investors.The IHP project has a steering committee of sponsors and senior scientists. Advisory committees are also established for specific efforts. NIST provides an administrative role for some federally supported efforts, i.e., sponsors provide money to NIST which then funds the work. The preferred mode of operation of the IHP Project is to pool modest amounts of support from multiple sponsors to achieve objectives, with projects selected by the IHP Steering Committee. Additional information on the IHP Project is available at the project web site www.IHPCentral.org.