For many years now, Climate Control Middle East and its diverse portfolio of conferences have suggested specific action to improve energy efficiency with a view to lowering indirect emissions and reducing the total cost of ownership. Likewise, the magazine and the conferences have collected and shared insights and specific solutions from stakeholders on enhancing indoor environmental quality and improving food safety. In that context, a recently drafted Eurovent Middle East position paper that calls for a structured inspection and surveillance regime to improve building performance in terms of energy efficiency, indoor air quality and fire safety, and to safeguard thermally sensitive food is a much-welcome addition to the body of literature in the UAE.

Authored by Markus Lattner, Managing Director, Eurovent Middle East, the paper highlights the need for buildings to be subjected to continuous inspections throughout their life span to complement the efforts and initiatives of standardisation bodies, like Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) and Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council (ADQCC) towards implementing minimum energy performance requirements (MEPS) for some product ranges in the HVACR sector. It advocates the need for continuous vigilance, as opposed to being in a state of complacency that the building has passed through commissioning.

Likewise, the paper articulates the need for recurrent certification of cold storage facilities and transport refrigeration fleets to ensure their compliance with national and international standards.

Besides spotlighting the need for preventing counterfeit refrigerants, which pose a risk to human safety and equipment reliability, the paper shines a light on the need for inspection of ventilation systems in buildings to ensure they reliably support efforts aimed at prevention and suppression of smoke development in the event of fire outbreaks. “Low quality products, inadequate installations, and sub-standard maintenance and operation increase these risks drastically,” Lattner writes in the paper. “While the majority of the industry is investing in the quality and safety of its products, this cannot be said for all manufacturers, and apart from that, inadequate installation, design, handling and maintenance make most of these efforts obsolete.”

The paper suggests that inspection and surveillance mechanisms can be strengthened in the country. Quoting a number greater than 1,000 as a minimum requirement for a full-strength inspection team, the paper recommends recruiting, training and empowering those Emiratis that have received vocational skills education to carry out the inspection and surveillance functions. Through benefitting from structured capacity-building and awareness programmes, the paper says, the team, driven by strong national spirit and pride, will become a potent force that will ensure compliance from building and fleet owners. It will ensure the proper installation of technically sound, as opposed to sub-standard, equipment and spare parts. Further, it will ensure that only competent FM companies and engineering teams are tasked with maintaining facilities and fleets.

A structured inspection and surveillance regime, the paper says, will benefit manufacturers, suppliers and certifiers of equipment and well-organised FM companies, among other service providers. It will contribute to better health and safety in buildings and ensure wellbeing, productivity and other socio-economic benefits.

Surendar Balakrishnan is the Editor of Climate Control Middle East magazine, and Co-Founder and Editorial Director of CPI Industry. He may be contacted at surendar@cpi-industry.com