KNPC’s Green Building Committee Members Master Sustainability in Building Operations
Kuwait National Petroleum Company employees attend GSAS Operations Workshop held at KNPC’s Mina Abdullah Refinery Admin building in Kuwait on Monday, December 10th, 2018.
The GSAS Operations Certification empowers building owners, developers, planners, consultants, contractors, facility managers, building administrators, commissioning engineers, environmentalists, and the building occupants to minimize the negative environmental impacts of existing buildings. The certification allows KNPC employees to incorporate best sustainability practices in their buildings’ operations notwithstanding of the design of a building.
Certifying building operations and maintenance practices not only help reducing the environmental impacts of KNPC’s existing buildings, it also enables long-sustained operations at high performance levels. KNPC’s Green Building Committee members learned how adopting a sustainable building design lowers the energy demand in existing buildings by more than 50 percent compared to conventional buildings in Kuwait and allows reduction in water waste by more than half of the rate of normal buildings.
Throughout the workshop, Eng. Zaki Mohammed, Senior GSAS Project Manager, introduced KNPC’ Green Building Committee members to the GSAS Operation Certification requirements and assessment process, and illustrated the direct positive impacts of sustainability in operations on the health and well-being of the occupants.
Furthermore, they learned how to optimize energy use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve indoor environmental quality, enhance human comfort and wellbeing, improve occupant productivity and reduce operation and maintenance expenses.
The system’s adoptive quantitative and qualitative measurements evaluate the building performance in five main assessment categories: energy consumption and performance, water consumption, indoor environment quality, waste management, and facility management.
Projects that target the standard operations scheme must fulfill the energy, water and facility management requirements. While projects that demonstrate compliance in the energy, water, indoor environment, waste management and facility management categories will be awarded the Premium Scheme certificate.
GSAS-OP CGP Workshop is one of several ongoing initiatives organized in the State of Kuwait, expanding GORD’s sustainability efforts to existing buildings in the GCC region.
