Emirates Glass initiatives lead to specifying three million square metres of glass by international and local professionals

Emirates Glass LLC (EGL), one of the leading processors of architectural flat glass in the Middle East and a subsidiary of Glass LLC, wholly owned by Dubai Investments (DI), has announced the success of its training initiatives geared towards educating professionals from various industries on the different types of glass as well as their suitable applications.

As a result, practitioners from the construction, design, and architectural sectors have specified a total of three million square metres of EGL high-performance glass to satisfy a myriad of construction requirements.

The training initiatives during 2008 by Emirates Glass have also been extended to activities in Qatar where relations were established with over 60 architects, engineers, and facade specialists, who are targeting more than 20 projects in Doha.

The campaign, whose main objective is to orient contractors and architects on how to choose the best glass for buildings, thereby effectively eliminating potential challenges arising from the installation of the wrong type of glass, is composed of a series of over 60 seminars gathering the most active team of consultants and architects in the Middle East.

As part of its outreach programme to further boost the region's glass industry, EGL's initiatives provide informative training focused on a range of technical subjects related to the proper applications of glass to more than 500 architects, equipping them with knowledge and expertise to evaluate their projects and processes from a technical perspective.

Commenting on the announcement, Ms. Maya Zouein, Marketing Director, Emirates Glass, said:

'Through the training initiative, we formulate an approach to reaching out to the external community with internal training to deliver the correct level of knowledge in support of the external professional community, including clients, architects, and contractors.'

The Value Engineering Seminar, which focuses on glass facade performance, is highly requested. Flexibility is also another important feature of EGL's training campaign. With tailor-made seminars aimed at addressing specific issues and challenges, industry professionals such as architects can request customised lectures that will help them accomplish their tasks more efficiently and with more positive results.

In a nutshell, EGL's Value Engineering Seminar enables professional designers to choose the right product that will deliver the right performance at the right place at the right time. The seminar includes glass basics for architects, a topic that describes value in the design that can be achieved without sacrificing performance.

Bespoke seminars for junior and senior architects, which include trips to existing buildings and to the company's manufacturing plant in Al Quoz, demonstrate the glass processes with state-of-the-art machinery. Meanwhile, trips to EGL's float glass factory in Abu Dhabi have also been arranged.

Furthermore, the leading glass processor's initiatives encompassed a Value Engineering Seminar and an introductory seminar on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). The LEED seminar provides a glimpse of the suite of standards instituted to enable environmentally sustainable construction.

'The value engineering seminar presents additional value in terms of intellectual understanding and pragmatic application to achieve the best cost-to-performance ratio,' Steve Lipscombe, Technical Manager at EGL explained.

'The outreach training programme delivered the added value services of Emirates Glass that will benefit the people and the entire industry,' he concluded.