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Turkish and Saudi delegates admire GSAS for its comprehensive approach

A 3-day GSAS-CGP workshop was organized by GORD Academy at the Qatar National Convention Center from 9 to 11 May 2017. The workshop hosted 38 senior professionals working in the construction industry within Qatar as well as from KSA, UAE, India, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt.  

Turkish and Saudi delegates admire GSAS for its comprehensive approach
Turkish and Saudi delegates admire GSAS for its comprehensive approach

The participants lauded GORD’s contributions and drive to sustainability best practices across the region and constant efforts of disseminating knowledge to the professionals. One of these attendees was Mr. Bandar Abdulaziz Raies from Anmet Engineering Consultancy in Saudi Arabia who spoke about how GORD’s work has inspired him:

I’m really delighted to learn about such extensive work and to gain all this knowledge. The major accomplishment of GSAS is that it has been proven through local R&D and there is no denying that we need to have standards developed for the region’s requirements. We have many projects coming up with keen interest in GSAS and its environmental , Economic and Social benefits. Further, we need to have a number of trainings to implement it. Not just all our engineers but I want our students studying in universities also to learn about GSAS . We have a group of enthusiasts in Saudi Arabia working together to reach Green Sustainable Built Environment working to collaborate with GSAS and hopefully we will soon have good news.

 We are also amazed to learn about the other initiatives by GORD such as the Gulf Green Mark and the Green Expo 2017 and feel it is very important for us  to collaborate and participate in these as it will really help us in achieving our objectives. I appreciate Dr. Yousef Alhorr and his team for their passion to share their knowledge and practices with all of us in the region and to think about the whole region collectively.

Another workshop participant, Mr. Cemil Yaman from ERKE Sustainable Building Design Turkey, spoke about his experience:

I have been working in the green building sector in Turkey and on projects in many other countries but to be honest, I learnt a lot of new things from this workshop and have found GSAS to be the most systematic and accurate system. It is comprehensive and easier to implement as it brings the learning of all other systems that making it wholistic and powerful. I congratulate GORD and the GSAS team for such a valuable system.

I plan to implement GSAS Operations Certification in our existing building project in Turkey that has been built as a prototype aiming green building perfection. It already has all the highest sustainability certifications and now we are aiming for GSAS 6 stars as we want to showcase this project to all of Turkey and our clients in other countries. This will be the first GSAS certified building in Turkey and I hope to be followed by many more.

On the last day of the workshop, Dr. Yousef Alhorr (Founding Chairman GORD) welcomed the new CGPs to the GSAS community and gave them an overview of some of the milestone projects recently launched by GORD including:

  • The GSAS Operations scheme from GSAS Trust, for assessment of existing buildings. Many projects are going for this certification this year including the headquarter of Ministry of Municipality & Environment in Qatar (which also won the Tarsheed Award for Conserving Building Competition 2017) and the Kuwait National Petroleum Company Head Office building.
  • QCOOL from GORD Institute the first smart patent air conditioning technology from Qatar that will be commercially available this year.
  • Bgreen, an outreach program from GORD Academy to educate people about sustainability concepts. We believe the sustainability message  is for everybody and for this, we have partnered with Kidzmondo at the Mall of Qatar to teach children about sustainability and resource saving through a number of games and activities

He also commented that at GORD, we believe teamwork is key to success of all initiatives and look forward to have your support and feedback to constantly develop and improve all our initiatives as you have been providing us in the past.

Besides participants from other countries, a large number of young professionals working in Qatar were also attending  the GSAS CGP workshop and listed a number of motivations and expectations from the training. While most were assigned by their companies for implementing GSAS on the project they were working on, some were attending as a personal initiative as they were not currently working on a GSAS project but wanted to add the qualification for better working and networking opportunities.