QGBC: Greening Qatars construction Industry starts The second seminar hosted by the Qatar Green Building Council

on 26 July 2010 was definitely an eye opener on some of the finer points of green building principles and the organisers had invited speakers who could enlighten the attendees on some of its basic principles. The four speakers were Nadja Ortner of Ortner Consulting who elucidated the audience on the life cycle of a green building, Eng. Mohammed Jaber, Chair of QGBC Education Committee (from KEO) spoke on Energy, Eng. Marten Hay, Vice Chair of QGBC Technical committee (from GHD) spoke on Shading and glazing and lastly Dr. Alex Amato, Co-Chair of QGBC Research and Innovation (from Davis Langdon) ended off with a presentation on the pros and cons of recycling. Nadja Ortner addressed the key question of water scarcity in the Gulf region. She looked at how the construction sector could respond in both reducing demand and examining methods of increasing supply by suitable treatment and reuse. She did note that it will be more expensive to green a project than to take the traditional route. In response to a question on whether there are different standards for measuring the quality of water in different countries; she said that, yes, there did seem to be different standards but this should not be the case as there was a minimum accepted standard that is applied by those in the green construction industry. Another question from the audience was regarding the cost of constructing a green building. In response to the query on what the break even point for a green building was, she answered that for some buildings this point may be 5 or 6 years while for others it may be as much as 20 years. Eng. Mohammed Jaber, Chair of QGBC Education Committee (from KEO) was the second speaker and he presented on renewable energy and other sources of energy like nuclear energy. By increasing our use of renewable energy sources we are decreasing the cost of its production. He addressed the passive approach to reduce consumption of energy and how this could be done during the construction and finishing of the building. These included: Ensuring that the building is oriented so that solar radiating is optimized, glazing should be appropriate to ensure that energy is not lost due to inadequate glazing techniques, this will lead to less HVAC (ventilation load), daylight views should be optimised and of course this should be done in conjunction with the appropriate glazing techniques and essential lighting should be minimal and there should be more automated lighting control. Prior lighting designs used to allow for 20 30 watts per sq.m., while current lighting designs recommend 10 watts per sq.m. Eng. Martin Hay illuminated the 100 plus attendees about the benefits of using appropriate solar shading systems, brise soleil as one of the most efficient ways of controlling solar heat gain. In addition using traditional, locally derived designs for shading creates sustainable urban developments that can reduce car movement, car parking and promote pedestrian friendly areas. In other words, shading by buildings and infrastructure should be an integral and active part of an urban infrastructure. Hayes shared a low tech technique with the audience; he said that he found in the old city in

Damascus (that is undergoing urban redevelopment) people strung wire mesh between the buildings to allow plants to grow over it and this created shade as well as cooled the air down during the warmer months at relatively low cost and with minimal intervention. The final presentation was by Dr. Alex Amato, a life cycle assessment specialist. He kicked off his talk with a quick survey in which he asked the audience one question: How many people agreed that one should recycle at whatever cost? All except one person agreed with the statement. Amato went on to explain that the one cynic in the room was in fact more in the right than all the other tree huggers as sometimes it cost more to recycle an item than to create something new but customized. So the question facing a number of designers today, in his words: How can a designer select between nonrecyclable material with a low embodied energy and a recyclable material with a high embodied energy? An industry that has taken on the recycling challenge with some enthusiasm is the agricultural industry and portal frames. Portal frame structures may refer to buildings consisting of multiple portal frames linked together. Easy to visualise examples can include barns, sheds, warehouses - simple, open plan buildings. In fact used portal frames can be bought online. However, he says to truly revolutionise traditional building practices one has to think out of the box, or about boxes! Construction is generally thought about as a complex series of processes taking many months to conceptualise and complete and each project is unique. Not so, says Amato. A building envelope rarely differs from one to the other and if one starts thinking about using prefabricated units, or boxes, as a basic building block for each floor of a building then one can reduce building time considerably by prefabricating box type structures to be assembled on site as per specifications and finished accordingly with cladding, shading, glazing and whatever else you can think of, like a massive lego set. Ends. Words: 883