All along the water table

Paul Collett , June 18th, 2009

Following last month’s feature on water conservation and facilities management, fmME talks to Abdulrahman Kalantar, managing director of Nakheel Asset Management and Design, about the pivotal role of FM in the organisation’s corporate social responsibility progamme and Palm Jumeirah

fmME: From residential developments to mega projects such as the Palm, what is Nakheel’s policy on installing, maintaining and measuring eco-friendly water management systems in the region?

Abdulrahman Kalantar: Our Nakheel Corporate Sustainability and Environmental Policies require us to ‘use natural resources sustainably’ by considering environmental performance and climate change in investment decisions, master planning, development design and construction, property and community management while supporting research and development.

At present the water consumption is monitored across all our Nakheel managed buildings. Our FM department works hard to minimise our water consumption.

Over the past year, we have installed thousands of water saving devices across our portfolio of managed buildings, and in our Omran Workforce Accommodations. (Omran is Nakheel’s initiative to house its workforce in accommodation that is built from environmentally sustainable materials. ed) Typically, these devices have consisted of flow reducing aerators for faucets, inline flow regulators for showers, bathroom hoses (shatafs) and toilet cistern bags.

For this year’s Gulf Water Week, Nakheel launched its Water Week initiative under the banner of its ‘Reduce It!’ campaign. This project commenced on Palm Jumeirah and is being currently rolled out across all our other developments. The Water Week initiative introduced our residents to special offers for water saving devices from our service provider.



Our service provider is working within our developments to tailor our residents’ water-flow rates (taps/showers/toilets) in order to efficiently meet the personal requirements of our residents. Households that avail of these offers can expect to reduce their water consumption by up to 20 percent. With average Dubai residents consuming over 60 gallons of water per day, this could mean saving almost AED200 per year for every person in their household.

That’s inside the house, but we also achieve significant water savings in our outdoor environments through our landscape designs and the re-use of treated sewage effluent (TSE) in our irrigation systems. Using carefully selected plant species as well as soil amendments (which retain irrigation water) and smart irrigation systems, we can reduce our irrigation volume by 50 percent.

We see TSE as a precious resource, so if we minimise its consumption in the landscaped areas then we can also use the TSE for cooling water in the district cooling process as well as in our fire-fighting networks. This balance of water re-use is a guiding principle in the very early stages of our master planning process.

We also encourage residents to use native/adapted species, providing mulch cover, grouping plants based on their water needs, as well as a host of other techniques while our landscape experts are on hand to give technical assistance and review resident’s garden designs where necessary.

fmME: Can you detail the cost, emissions and environmental impact/savings of the above management systems and the measurement tools you use?

AK: Our systems for tracking consumption were developed in-house by our FM department, as part of our corporate sustainability programme.

Our close alliance with DEWA has enabled us to receive monthly statement billing data in electronic format. We process this data into meaningful charts to identify trends and compare against our 2008 baseline year. The FM teams can readily check the performance of buildings and see the results of their energy or water saving measures on a daily basis.

For example, this year we are hoping to reduce our water consumption from the common areas of our managed buildings by over 3.5 million gallons, and our water costs by approximately AED150,000 per year. Recent studies in the UAE have estimated that every 50,000 gallons of desalinated water leads to one ton of carbon emissions. Accordingly, by year-end we anticipate that our corporate carbon footprint will have reduced by more than 70 tons through water conservation alone.

fmME: Can you outline what your environmental association with the United Nations University means regarding your FM team and the Palm Jumeirah development?

AK: Nakheel’s four year partnership with United Nations University-International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) has three main objectives which directly support the day-to-day function of our FM team.

The first objective of the partnership is to develop a coastal monitoring and management plan for the Palm. As this plan matures, it will provide our FM team with scientific advice to enable them to pro-actively manage our waterways, utilities, beaches and marinas. Already their input is directing our beach maintenance programmes, the management of salt water utility intakes, and our swimmer water quality monitoring programme.

The second objective is the establishment of a state-of-the-art marine biology laboratory. This lab was opened in 2008 and has already proved extremely valuable in managing recent algal bloom events off the coast of Dubai and providing expert advice to our FMs.



The final goal of the partnership is to impart the growing knowledge base and coastal management skills into the local and regional community. This will ensure the future of our coastal and marine ecosystems.

Through internships, seminars and workshops, the body of local expertise is increasing with obvious benefit for the future of the FM of our coastal communities.   

fmME: Can you outline the impact of the Palm on the marine environment, the monitoring of coral and marine life and the UNU’s findings?

AK: The UNU’s work to protect Dubai’s coastal waterways is ongoing. They are studying the ecology of the local coral reefs, the fish populations, the benthic (or seabed) communities, as well as the local plankton. In addition, the currents and waves along the coast of Dubai are also being investigated to understand their influence on the local ecology.

Their findings to date have revealed the establishment of ecosystems of marine life in, and around, Nakheel projects that are not dissimilar to the communities that are found in natural systems, illustrating how nature adapts.