WELL AP Ken Fong knows how to engineer a space for wellness
Learn how the WELL AP credential helped Ken Fong merge his passions for engineering, health and design, elevating his career to new heights.
Today, specialization is encouraged everywhere; we are trained to pick one favorite subject, one major, one secular career path. However, building bridges across different domains can help us think innovatively—and design solutions that answer the big questions. When multiple passions can be integrated together with a purpose, you transform a job into a career that works for you.
For Ken Fong, WELL AP, senior acoustic and WELL consultant at Arup in Melbourne, Australia, his introduction to the WELL Accredited Professional (WELL AP) credential marked a paradigm shift that forever changed the way he thought about his two biggest passions: design and wellness.
“I first heard about WELL in 2016 from my mum. She works with a property developer in Malaysia and they were involved in a large wellness precinct development,” Ken says. “So when I heard that there was this standard that combined my twin passions of design and wellness, I could barely contain myself. I read everything I could about WELL and the rest is history. I sat for my WELL AP exam in 2016 and haven’t looked back since!”
The WELL AP credential helped Ken expand his perspective as an acoustic consultant and engineer. In turn, it armed him with the background and knowledge he needed to integrate health and wellness into larger decision-making conversations across different areas of interest for his clients.
“While some people associate wellness design as nothing more than the process of getting a WELL plaque stamped on their front door, my value is increasingly found in being able to expand their thinking,” Ken says. “I try to demonstrate how wellness impacts every part of the decision-making process, regardless of the topic. I’ve been getting a lot more involved in the upstream discussions about the impact wellness has on topics as varied as town planning, to organizational strategy, to personal health transformation habits.”
Images: Ken delivers a presentation at the Indoor Air Quality Association of Australia; Receiving a WELL Certification Platinum plaque on behalf of the Arup Melbourne office.
The road to health through the WELL AP
Though Ken’s initial introduction to WELL was through his mother, his father also had a hand in instilling the values and commitment to forward-thinking needed to thrive as a WELL AP in projects of all shapes and sizes.
“My dad owns a manufacturing plant that services many industries, primarily electronics. In that industry, it’s fast-paced with low profit margins and requires constant innovation. To survive in that field, you have to adapt quickly, demonstrate technical excellence and constantly improve,” Ken says. “These are the values I’ve slowly absorbed by osmosis, watching my dad all these years. As such, I’m always keen to play my part in keeping WELL relevant so it delivers the best value to everyone it touches.”
By incorporating concepts from the International WELL Building Institute’s (IWBI’s) WELL Building Standard, Ken is able to broaden the scope of knowledge that informs his work with acoustics. His training as a WELL AP allows him to think outside of the box.
“As acoustic designers, our primary responsibility is to create an acoustic environment that elevates the human experience. Numbers, standards, formulas are nothing more than tools to achieve that. Designers are increasingly aware that these tools are limited in their influence of improving a subjective human experience,” Ken explains. “But at Arup, we’re expanding the scope of research to include knowledge from non-acoustic fields like human cognition, psycho-social research, anthropology and neuroscience into our design. Our process has really challenged many assumptions around acoustic design.”
Images: Ken receives a 2019 WELL Faculty leadership award from Rachel Gutter, President at IWBI; selfie on the job in the underground train tunnels while working on the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project.
Beyond a credential for health and wellness engineering
For Ken, health, wellness and sustainability aren’t just parts of his job. These elements permeate through his daily routine, and it’s something he shares with his family members, friends and colleagues.
“One of my highest values in life is my health and well-being –I orientate pretty much everything around this value. It defines what I eat, where I live, what I choose to do with my time, how I think, what I buy, everything,” laughs Ken.
Images: Ken and his son enjoying one of their many “Geocaching” adventures; View from Ken’s favorite spot on Mt Dandenong, Victoria.
The WELL AP has helped Ken find the focal shift he was looking for in his career and he encourages others to explore the WELL AP to see for themselves. For those aspiring to the credential, he offered a few words of wisdom.
“Read everything,” Ken chuckles. “Don’t just focus on the requirements of the feature—know the why behind every feature. Get to know the context, learn the underpinning stats that inform each feature and get to know the specific human impact of each intervention.”
Ultimately, Ken’s experience with WELL has allowed him to take a wider view on the things that matter. He’s seeing health and wellness from a holistic point of view, one that can benefit everyone—and everything.
“One perspective that’s really shifted for me is how I view sustainability. I used to think its primary focus was on things like the circular economy, carbon zero, waste, energy, etc. But on deeper reflection, I’m increasingly seeing it from a human-centered perspective,” he notes. “Planetary health is nothing more than a means toward long-lasting, inter-generational human health. So if my highest value is human health, then that should give me even greater motivation to improve planetary health too.”
