Industry leader calls for new ways of thinking in construction industry

Dubai, November 23, 2004. The gulf between building designers and operations and maintenance must be bridged, according to Richard H Rooley, keynote speaker at the Annual Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Conference, which began today (Tuesday) at the Gulf Construction Conference Week.

Rooley, 2003-4 President of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, (ASHRAE) and Principal of Project Management Partnership and Rooley Consultants since 1991, addressed an audience of around 40 international, regional and local HVAC industry leaders at the kick-off session of the two day event.

"There is an area of fuzzy communication between architects, designers and building contractors. They don't speak the same language. In a low capital industry such as construction, it is always believed that site engineers will sort out the problems on-site. There isn't a single office in the world where they are training designers to understand operations and maintenance," he said.

Rooley is clearly frustrated by this communications gap, and hoped that in postulating this theory, he would be proved wrong.

"I am saying this in the hope that someone will prove me wrong, but that has yet to happen," he added.

This separation of the design process and maintenance has led to many design failures, and Rooley argued that designers must better understand operations and maintenance in order to facilitate good building and component performance.

Moving on to discuss whole life cycle of components within a building, Rooley suggested a move towards reliability-centred maintenance or total productive maintenance.

"The industry relies on projections of service life, which are a fiction. The old way of maintenance is to preserve physical assets, but we need to move towards preserving the function of those assets. There needs to be a shift away from thinking in terms of simply upgrading design, and look at the operations and maintenance history to improve performance. Re-design should be a last resort," he said.

Rooley is one of 17 HVAC thought leaders presenting papers during the two day event, held at Emirates Towers until Wednesday, November 24th.

The Annual HVAC Conference is sponsored by VTS Clima, a leader in the technology and production of HVAC equipment. VTS Clima units are certified by Eurovent, ISO 9001, CE, Rostest and TUV.

The Second Annual Gulf Construction Conference Week is the Middle East's premier gathering of regional construction industry executives. Organised by Al Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions, the five-day event includes four conference streams: Aluminium and Glass; Insulation; Concrete Technology and Corrosion Protection, and HVAC.

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For more information, please contact:
David Hirst,
General Manager,
Hilal Conferences & Exhibitions
PO Box 6387,
Dubai,
UAE
Tel: +971 4 337 1366
email:  david.hirst@tradearabia.ae
Or visit: www.hilalconferences.com/gccw

© Press Release 2004