GORD Academy conducted a workshop on Thursday, 27th September 2018 titled GSAS-D&B Energy Assessment for Classic Schemes, in order to provide the professionals with a comprehensive understanding of GSAS Energy Assessment Framework and to demonstrate practically how to implement best practices on building energy conservation. Moderated by Eng. Zaki Ahmed, MEP Team Leader & GSAS Senior Project Manager at GORD, the session examined various GSAS tools and the best practices in calculating the energy performance of buildings through error-free submissions.

GSAS Construction Management Energy calculator was also explicitly explained, demonstrating live projects and submission examples for clarity. The workshop also browsed the Operations Certificate Energy Calculator presenting the latest version of GSAS Calculators using the Visual Basic programming language Software, which is considered to be a simple, intuitive, and user-friendly language.

Energy use is one of the most important environmental issues and managing its use is should be anticipated in any community. Buildings are the dominant energy consumers. Statistics clearly indicate that 30 to 40% of all primary energy is used for buildings operation which are considered responsible for 40–50% of greenhouse gas emissions. One of the main goals of GSAS is to control the building’s depletion of fossil energy over its service life. In line with this noble goal, the Energy category in GSAS consists of factors associated with the energy demand of buildings, the efficiency of energy delivery, and the use of fossil energy sources that result in harmful emissions. To mitigate the impacts of fossil energy, several strategies need to be adopted such as designing the building to lower its energy demand, selecting efficient building systems, lowering the demand on non-renewable sources of energy and minimizing the amount of harmful substances produced by the energy delivery systems and the energy supply network.

Around fifty professionals working in various disciplines in the construction industry of Qatar and other countries in the MENA region namely Kuwait and Lebanon. We took this opportunity to talk to them and learn how they look at GSAS and how this workshop helped them in applying the certification standards in relation to their respective projects.

Jouzy Backer – Gharnata Consulting Engineers

I’m working on a project in Lusail. I took my CGP workshop long ago, so these workshops and refresher courses really help me keep updated. Specially the updates about the calculators are very helpful as it’s quite challenging to work on these.

Mariam Al-Dousari – KNPC

I’m an engineer by professions and GSAS is my first experience of working on a sustainability system. I feel it is the perfect fit for our climate and environment. I’m new to this field and still learning. I’m working on the Mina Abdullah project and now finalization for the certificate. It’s good to see that now more companies in Kuwait are applying for GSAS certifications.

Hanin Hamdan – Dar Al Handasah

I’m a CGP and it’s my first visit to Qatar. I found this workshop to be very beneficial because Energy is the main bulk in GSAS and involves a lot of inputs and supporting documents etc. so going through the Energy calculators cell by cell and the discussions with questions from engineers working on different projects provided a comprehensive information on the topic. I believe every CGP must take this workshop because the CGP workshop covers all aspects but this one covers Energy in detail that we need.

Alaa Elnabarawy – EHAF Consulting Engineers

I’ve been a CGP for almost ten years. It is a very good step from GORD Academy to organize a workshop on Energy Assessment as this is the most crucial topic for us who are working with GSAS. I really liked the workshop. Although I’m a senior CGP, yet there were a lot of new things I learned in today’s workshop. It’s great to see GSAS achieving milestones.