Hanan Taleb

The Integration of Sustainability Within Value Management Practices: A Study of Experienced Value Managers in the GCC Countries

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) comprises the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the states of Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. These countries are fairly similar in terms of socioeconomic, commercial, and infrastructural development. Disappointingly perhaps, their thriving construction industries continue to score poorly in terms of sustainability. Although value management (VM) has been proposed as a potential mechanism for delivering sustainable construction projects in some countries, this idea has not yet been widely put into practice around the world. The aim of this article is to investigate this potential in the GCC countries through interviewing 17 experienced value managers from the GCC. The primary conclusion, derived from the viewpoints of these value managers, is that such an endeavor might be unviable at present, largely due to a lack of awareness with regard to sustainability issues in the GCC. Proposals are therefore provided to assist in a successful integration of sustainability into VM practices in the GCC region.

Gender and leadership styles in single‐sex academic institutions

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the relationship between gender and female leadership styles in a single‐sex academic institution in Saudi Arabia.Design/methodology/approach – Essentially, a qualitative research approach that utilised a single case‐study methodology was adopted. As part of this research, seven in‐depth semi‐structured interviews were conducted with senior managers of the all‐womens Saudi academic institution.Findings – Evidence suggests that the interviewed female leaders of Manar College are inclined to adopt stereotypical attributes of feminine qualities of leadership. They also tend to prefer a democratic, interpersonally‐oriented and transformational style rather than autocratic, task‐oriented or transactional style of leadership. In essence their leadership styles seem to agree – to a large extent – with the mainstream view on womens ways of leading.Research limitations/implications – Despite the depth and richness of collected data, this research – as with all case studie...

Sustainable Architecture Under the Timeline Frame: Case Study of Fujairah in UAE

There is a significant link between thermal comfort and energy performance, since creating comfortable temperatures requires thermal energy. The tighter the tolerances of temperature demanded the more energy consumed. It is therefore important to understand the implications of relaxing those tolerances and what passive strategies are available as alternatives to mechanical temperature control. This study attempts to investigate the impact of passive environmental strategies on built form using a simulation of an existing residential building. The house is located in Al Bithna/Fujairah. The simulation was conducted using IES-VE software. The results show a reduction and savings when implementing different passive strategies. This begins with increasing window size and is followed by changing glazing type and finally adding a shading device to the base model. The aim of this study is to understand sustainability evolution in residential houses in the UAE across different time frames. The document will delve in the past to check the characteristics of old houses in the UAE and their attempts to maintain comfort and sustainability. Turning to the present, a case study is selected to which different passive design strategies are applied and a recommendation of what the future will look like in terms of sustainable residential houses is developed. The study concludes with a look at the impact of combined strategies to see the impact of different variables such as average day lighting, solar gain and cooling sensible load.

Climate Responsive Container Design for Sustainable Dwellings

The latent and looming risks resulting from the effects of climate change are currently considered as critical ecological challenges facing the world in the 21st century. The damages caused to fragile ecosystems by an augmented amount of resource extraction and infrastructural development in addition to the depleting ozone layer and a significant level of air pollution are also a cause for concern. This has prompted a need to design environmentally friendly buildings, including sustainable containers. The objective of this project is to draw attention to the significance of adopting innovative approaches and methodologies for sustainable containers designs. It further examines how the sustainable containers can be integrated for utility in different climatic zones to address the shortage of houses. The container’s response to the certain climatic zone is analyzed using Ecotect software from Autodesk. Findings suggest that the core objective of sustainable building design should be to reduce the total primary energy needs considerably through an application of renewable resources as well as through incidental heat gains that prompt the comfort system, in addition to a reduced utility of continuous energy importing to ensure comfort. When building fabric is utilized, there is a potential of minimizing artificial heating, lighting, cooling as well as alternative energy importing systems. Overall, shipping containers can be repurposed and converted into modern housing units, cafes, or workspaces as sustainable buildings because of their environmentally friendly nature and capacity to provide low-cost accommodation based on their nature of being reliable, accessible, flexible, and cost-effective. The containers can, therefore, be converted into architectural magnificence to resolve shortage of affordable housing, particularly in Lagos State, Nigeria.

Monitoring energy reduction through applying green roofs to residential buildings in Dubai

Green roofing in a building has many advantages including absorbing rainwater, providing thermal insulation, enhancing the ecology, creating a peaceful retreat for people and animals, improving air quality and helping to offset the air temperature and heat island effect. The aim of this paper is to monitor energy saving in the residential buildings of Dubai after applying green roofing techniques. The paper also attempts to provide a thermal analysis after the application of green roofs. A villa in Dubai was chosen as a case study. With the aid of energy simulation software, namely DesignBuilder, as well as manual recording and calculations, the energy savings after applying the green roofing were detected. To that extent, the paper draws some recommendations with regard to the types of green roofing that should be used in these particular climatic conditions based on this real experiment that took place over a one year period.

The potential for launching a postgraduate course on sustainable energy in Saudi Arabia

The pressures of a growing global population, compounded by environmental degradation, escalating energy use and the depletion of natural energy resources, have led to sustainable energy (SE) holding a prominent position on the international agenda. In spite of the widespread recognition of the important role of SE education in securing a sustainable future, it has not yet received much attention within oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia. A single-sex private college in Saudi Arabia – referred to here as ‘Al-Ola College’ – has been selected as a case study for this study. As part of this work, a survey has been distributed to all of the female students of Al-Ola College in order to examine their potential acceptance of such a proposed course dedicated to SE. Moreover, several in-depth interviews have been conducted with senior staff of the Al-Ola College and with the potential employers of SE graduates. Issues that have been investigated herewith go beyond the likelihood of acceptance of the new course, and include a detailed examination of the potential benefits and challenges that might be encountered when incorporating the subject of SE into Saudi higher education curricula, in addition to the employment prospects for female students specialising in SE in Saudi Arabia. The primary conclusion was that the launch of a postgraduate course on SE for Saudi females might not be viable at present. This conclusion emerges from the identification of a wide range of barriers including insufficient government support for the SE agenda, a lack of sustainability awareness, a strong social resistance to accepting this field of study and lack of work opportunities for females in the highly conservative Saudi society. As a result of this empirical research, a set of practical ‘enablers’ has been proposed in order to change the status quo with regard to the poor prospects for SE education in Saudi Arabia.

Urbanizing the deserts of Dubai: an outdoor thermal comfort case study of Dubai International Academic City, UAE

The urbanization of deserts in Dubai is one way in which this city can expand and explore its full potential. In this piece of research, a case study of the Dubai International Academic City was used as a basis from which to study the impact and importance of planning and orientation of projects in open unpopulated land. It demonstrates the various alternatives for project orientation relative to the sun and wind, its effects on temperature and wind readings and consequently on outdoor thermal comfort levels. ENVI-met was used to simulate various scenarios generated from the existing base case in both summer and winter. The orientation which best promoted and allowed for higher wind flow through the project was found to record the best outdoor Predicted Mean Vote levels, approaching the neutral state. The findings of this research may be used for setting up regulations regarding the planning of desert areas in Dubai on the basis of early assessment of designs.