Your WELL journey includes two rounds of documentation review: Preliminary and Final. These reviews help to confirm that all feature requirements have been met and ensure the integrity of WELL Certification. Once you have addressed all the reviewer’s comments from the preliminary review and submitted them for final review, you will receive your final documentation review comments within 20-25 business days. Watch this video or read the article below to learn more about the steps required to successfully submit for final review.

The image below shows a sample WELL v2 Certification timeline obtained from the WELL v2 timeline estimator tool. 

Accessing your preliminary review 

After your first round of review, you will receive a message that your preliminary review report with comments is available. Access your review report to see the results of the preliminary review. 

Understanding the structure of your review report 

The top of the report contains a summary, using the following designations:

• The number of precondition points which require updates and/or additions to the documentation
• The number of precondition points which require data collected during onsite performance testing
• In a performance review, this designation will be called Achieved
• The number of optimization points which require updates and/or additions to the documentation
• The number of optimization points which require data collected during onsite performance testing)
• The number of optimization points which require both updates and/or additions to the documentation and data collected during onsite performance testing
• In a performance review, this designation will be called Not Achieved
• The total number of points that the reviewer confirmed to be attempted
• The total number of points per the project team’s selections in their WELL scorecard)

As mentioned above, the following pages of your review report will include a ‘Status’ and a 'Review Comment' for each feature part, as illustrated in the image below.

Explanation of statuses with examples

• For the feature parts that do not require any further action/documentation, the reviewer will mark them as “Anticipated,” as shown in feature L05.1 in the image below.

  In a performance review, this status will be "Achieved."

• For feature parts where the submitted documentation is non-compliant or if additional details are required, the reviewer will mark them as "Pending Documentation." The reviewer will also provide you with guidance in the Review Comment section for you to take further action, as shown in feature T03.1 in the image below.
• For feature parts that require on-site performance testing, the reviewer will mark them as "Pending On-site Assessment," as shown in feature S02.1 in the image below. You are not required to take any further action during the documentation review.
• For feature parts that require both documentation and on-site performance testing as verification, where both updates and/or additions to the submitted documentation and on-site performance testing are needed, the reviewer will mark them as "Pending Documentation, Pending On-site Assessment," as shown in feature N01.2 in the image below.

• For feature parts that require both documentation and on-site performance testing as verification, where the documentation submitted does not require any further action/documentation; however, the on-site performance testing will be required, the reviewer will mark them as "Anticipated, Pending On-Site Assessment," as shown in feature L02.1 in the image below.

  

• For the feature parts where the documentation submitted during final documentation review is not compliant, the reviewer will mark them as "Not Anticipated," as shown in feature W05.1 in the image below.

  In a performance review, this status will be "Not Achieved."

  Achievement of some feature parts is dependent on achievement within another feature part. Read on to learn how these cases appear in review reports.

   

Case #1: a feature part is dependent on another feature part that must pass on-site testing 

Feature L01.1 is an example, where if the project team chooses to pursue option 4, achievement of L01.1 relies on the performance testing results feature L03. In this scenario in the documentation review report, the reviewer will mark feature part L01.1 as "Pending Documentation" and provide a review comment, as shown in the image below.

This feature part may remain "Pending Documentation" in status up through Final Performance Review.

Case #2: a feature part is dependent on another feature part that only requires documentation

Feature A06.1 option 1 is an example, where achievement of this feature part relies on achievement of feature A03.1. In this scenario, the reviewer will mark the feature part as "Anticipated" as long as the dependent part is also "Anticipated," as shown in the image below.

• If the dependent feature part is "Pending Documentation" the reviewer will also mark the associated feature part "Pending Documentation." In this case, the project team should refer to review comments regarding the dependent feature part, as shown in the image below.

Case #3: a feature part requires on-site assessment is dependent on another feature part that requires on-site assessment

Feature A08.2 is an example, where A08.2 requires on-site assessment and is dependent on A08.1 which also requires on-site assessment. In this scenario, the reviewer will mark A08.2 as "Anticipate, Pending On-site Assessment" and provide a review comment indicating that there are on-site requirements for the part itself, and it is dependent on the achievement of the dependent part, as shown in the image below.

Understanding review comments

Review comments may specify the need for drawings, photographs, or additional documentation to ensure the feature part meets compliance. 

Below are a few examples: 

Resources to help you respond

Here are a few resources and tips to consider in putting together your responses for your final WELL documentation review:

Review the feature requirements for any features marked Pending Documentation

Cross-reference your updated documentation with the feature sections that were highlighted in your preliminary review. Make sure that your updated documents respond to each comment, and that your updates fulfill the requirements of the relevant feature sections as written. 

Consider how many of the features to respond to based on your targeted WELL achievement

Calculate the number of features required to submit the updated documentation. For example, if you only need 5 more features to achieve your targeted level of certification, but you have 12 features listed as Pending Documentation, you may decide to only respond to a smaller set of those features. We always recommend targeting a few features beyond what is required for your targeted milestone. 

Reference the verification tab in the digital standard

Open up the digital standard and navigate to the "verification" tab for the features to which you are responding. The verification tab often provides helpful information about what submitted documentation should cover at minimum.

Review sample documentation if available

Check for any available sample documentation as these documents can be helpful to reference when addressing pended features. To access the sample documentation, go to your project dashboard, click on the Support tab, scroll down to the Documentation Prep section, and open Sample Documentation.

Other challenges

• If you have challenges in reaching the threshold of features needed, you can consider adding new features in your final submission or consider submitting an innovation proposal or an AAP. 
  • Innovations, which may include an already approved innovation or a novel one that you propose. See the Innovations concept for more information.
  • Alternative Adherence Paths (AAPs), which may include an already approved AAP or a novel one that you propose for any of the features. 

Contact us for WELL coaching support if you have questions about your review comments by clicking the ‘Get Help’ button in your ‘Support Tab’. 

Submitting for your final review

The steps to submitting for your final review are as follows:

1. Upload your documentation into your scorecard under the appropriate feature, as you did for your preliminary documentation. Ensure it is all clearly labeled.
2. When all your documents have been uploaded, click on the Reviews tab of your WELL project dashboard and click “+Submit review” button.
3. Choose Final Documentation review as the Review phase from the dropdown menu.

You can expect to receive your final review results in 20-25 business days!

WELL Ratings

These instructions apply to Health-Safety Rating accounts created after April 18, 2023, as well as all Equity Rating and Performance Rating accounts. For Health-Safety Rating accounts created before April 18, 2023, click here.

After each round of review, your organization will receive a progress report that contains the results of your review. The report includes a list of your locations and milestone targets for this review, a summary of your achievements, a description of the status of each document you have submitted including comments from the reviewers, a summary of your score by feature, and a summary of your score by part. First, download your progress report, then use this article to learn how to interpret your results.

This page will explain what information you can find on each tab of the progress report and how to interpret it.

Locations List

The Locations list tab provides a summary of your locations and their milestone targets for this review.

Achievements Summary

This tab contains a detailed description of achievements earned by your locations, as well as information about points earned by each location. Column J shows how many points were earned by each of your locations, and column K indicates whether each location has achieved its targeted rating. The columns further to the right display the number of points earned in each action area.

Document Rulings

The Document Rulings tabs explain the status of each document you submitted for review. 

You can find the document status in column AA and relevant comments in AB. Columns AC and AD show the points awarded, if applicable. The columns to the right starting with AE show the locations the document was assigned to–if a document was assigned to a location, “Assigned” will appear in the corresponding cell.

• Approved: This document fulfills the requirements for the feature. These cells will be highlighted green. No further action is required.
• Pending: Due to an issue with this document, it has not yet been approved. The Review Comments column (column AB) explains your next steps to address the issue.

Scoring features

This tab shows the current status of each feature across each property.

• 'Incomplete' indicates that some Parts have been achieved but not all Parts.
• 'Not achieved' indicates that no Parts have been achieved.
• A green cell with 'P' indicates a v2 Certification Precondition has been met.
• A green cell with points indicates that this many points are achieved.

Scoring by Part

This tab shows the current status of each feature part across each property. 

• "Incomplete" indicates that some documents have been approved, but not all of those required for this Part. 
• "Not achieved" indicates that no documents have been approved for this Part. 
• A green cell with "P" indicates a Precondition for WELL v2 certification has been met. 
• A green cell with points indicates that this many points are achieved for this Part.

Health-Safety Rating accounts created before April 18, 2023

These instructions apply to Health-Safety Rating accounts created before April 18, 2023.

A few important things to keep in mind when reading your review report:

• Each location must pursue a minimum of 15 features
• If your project contains multiple locations, you must complete the Multiple Projects Documentation Sharing Form to indicate which locations are pursuing which features
• If your project contains multiple locations, you must provide audit documentation for each of your selected audit locations.
  • You can find your audit list on your project’s Documents tab as a general document

The top of your review report contains a summary, using the following designations:

Number of features pursuing

The total number of features per the project team’s selections in their WELL scorecard

Total achieved

The number of features the project has achieved

Total pending

The number of features which require updates and/or additions to the documentation

Total not achieved

The number of features which were not successfully achieved after final review

Explanation of statuses

Not attempted

This feature was not selected on the scorecard and the project team did not attempt it.

Pending

For feature parts where the submitted documentation is non-compliant or if additional details are required, the reviewer will mark them as "Pending." The reviewer will also provide you with guidance in the Comments column for you to take further action, as shown in the example from feature SC3 below.
 

Achieved

The documentation provided for the part successfully met feature requirements.

Understanding review comments

Review comments may specify the need for drawings, photographs, or additional documentation to ensure the feature part meets compliance. 

Below are a few examples: 

Example 1: Documentation provided but requirements not met

In the example below, a document was submitted for the feature, but it did not provide sufficient detail to meet the feature requirements.

To address this comment, the project team should review the feature requirements in the Standard or their project’s scorecard, as well as their submitted documentation. They will then need to either revise their document to address the missing information, or potentially make changes to their policies if the implemented policy does not meet feature requirements.

Example 2: Missing audit documentation

In the example below, sufficient audit documentation was not provided for each location that was chosen for audit. 

To address this comment, the project team should check their audit list and be sure that they have uploaded documents specific to each location.

Example 3: Document not annotated

In this example, a document was provided but the project team did not annotate the document to indicate which portions demonstrated compliance with the feature requirements.

To address this comment, the project team should annotate their document using the WELL Document Annotation Guide Documentation must be annotated if only certain sections of the document are relevant to the WELL feature (e.g., if the feature requires details of your health benefits and you provide your entire benefits manual, you must annotate the document to indicate which part describes the health benefits).