Perspective : GEORGE BERBARI (CEO)

As a founding team member of Tabreed, George Berbari is widely respected in the region for his expertise in District Cooling and in HVAC & R systems, in general, as applicable to the region. Berbari has published a paper in the Ashrae Journal, titled “Fresh Air Treatment in Hot & Humid Climate”. Berbari recently founded DC Pro Engineering, an electro-mechanical engineering firm that specializes in District Cooling and high-end projects. Climate Control Middle East met up with Berbari to find out more about DC Pro Engineering and about his views on the HVAC & R industry in the region…

Could you please explain the mission of DC Pro Engineering?
C Pro Engineering comprises a highly specialized team from Tabreed. And we left Tabreed to form our group. We hope that by not being associated with any District Cooling company, we will be able to serve the whole District Cooling industry. We would like to see ourselves handling high-end, specialized industrial jobs, or jobs of a special nature that need the highest end of expertise in the electro-mechanical field.

High end? Could you give specific examples?
I am talking of something like the planetarium project in Dubailand. And maybe a building with an HVAC system that is new to the Middle East. And maybe a large resort project. We will not compete in the typical electro-mechanical field. I mean, there are enough players already, and we want to distinguish ourselves to be able to deliver the highest possible output in the world in that field. We believe that we are a leading world authority in what we know, and we want to capitalize on that know-how. It seems the market is embracing us – we have just started, and we have more than probably 200,000 TR to design and a couple of specialized projects. This is also a reflection of the market, that the market has developed and matured enough to look for quality people. They are ready to embrace us – it seems we are living in an era of know-how and knowledge and skills rather than big names and big consultancies that have been in the world for a long time.

You are talking of 200,000 TR of air conditioning – could you please elaborate?
We are working to probably finalize 37,000 TR for Qatar Cool’s West Bay Plant 2 project. We are working with Arabian Bemco Contracting Company Limited. We are working with them on another plant. We are preparing concept design for bidding stage for a 110,000 TR plant there. And we are also working on two projects with Emicool – one involves a 75,000 TR plant, and the other involves expanding an existing plant from 7,000 TR to 15,000 TR. We are working with Parons in Oman on a project there. It is still at an initial stage. We are also working on the initial stage of the planetarium in Dubailand. And as I mentioned earlier, we are hoping to implement this special new HVAC system, in this residential tower in Sharjah. The tower is 45 storeys in height.

In what way are the planetarium and Sharjah projects unique?
In what way does your expertise come into play?
Probably in my career, I have revolutionized the HVAC industry in the Middle East. We have transferred more than 20 new technologies, and we have pioneered six on the world scale. The Sharjah project will involve an altogether new technology in the region. It is based on water-cooled packages and double-heat recovery fresh air systems. Typically, the Sharjah market was based on air-cooled ducted split.

The Sharjah project will be with a new company that we are establishing, called Morsel Energy. The company – it is under formation – will go and invest in these common services. It will be the first company of its kind in the world in that field to build on an existing technology and form a new business.

You mentioned earlier that you revolutionized the HVAC industry. Could you describe your role in the industry?
Before we started, we were in an arid area. Almost 99% of the systems were air-cooled. Gas was never used in air conditioning. Natural gas, that is. And District Cooling was never applied in the world on low-density applications. It was a very challenging career to convince the government as to how feasible it was to move from air-cooled to water-cooled systems. They had their reservations – to them, water equals life, and there was big resistance to using water. But we proved to them that generating power is more expensive than generating water. Not only does it (generating power) consumes more power but also increases the emission of carbon dioxide into the environment.

So we had to prove our case to the government, and eventually, water-cooled system were adopted, and that shifted the water-cooled penetration from 1% to 60%. In the UAE, for example, more than 60% of the projects – probably all the large projects above 2,000 TR and all the District Cooling projects – are water-cooled. Yes, times have changed. I mean, when we started out , people jumped on us for three years: “What are you using? Gas? And what it this District Cooling? It will never work!” And right now, beyond our dreams, there are more than seven million of tonnes of District Cooling plants. And you know, in India, they say, “Some pioneers are eaten by the tigers.” I think we survived, and we proved our case, and I hope what we did will make the economy more competitive.

Prove your case…?
We proved our case by daily hard effort, by looking at the best possible options, by not being afraid of trying anything new, by studying all aspects. I mean, new technology, you know. People are skeptical and resist change, so you have to prove the feasibility of these technologies. For example, people will tell you, a 125-km distribution on a 20,000 TR plant will never work. People will tell you, it’s not economical until you prove to be economical. People will tell you that generating power and synchronizing with the grid has never been done before and that the authorities will never approve of it. They will tell you that a seawater cooled plant will not work. And chiller manufacturers, for example, told us they would never guarantee a 3.3kV self starter, and yet we went ahead and did it, despite their resistance, and now they have followed us. We led the manufacturers our way. We did the first plant integration in terms of industrial control. And we managed to get the first automated reporting on plant performance. Now we can produce kilowatt/tonne for every single model and the total for the plants, and the water consumption…all these without anybody touching anything. You will have an hourly report, a monthly report, and an annual report. And that impressed al the American, Japanese and European visitors and they said, “You can export that to us anytime.” We were not also to try to go beyond meter where we controlled customer pumps and our own American consultants used to say, “This will enter you into litigation, and we went into that area, and now we have the most efficient plant, and we managed to resolve the low Delta T syndrome. Because we went beyond the customs, beyond borders, beyond imaginary boundaries. Sometime ago, I read, “Experts are so called, because they keep doing the same thing for 30 years.” So change firstly needs courage. It needs responsibility, it needs knowledge, it needs research. At the same time, there should be a reason for change. The reason is better economics, better environmental benefits, better comforts, better reliability. So you have to grow these cases first by doing the research for something that has not been tried, and do your simulations and look at it both from financial and technical perspectives. As engineers, we are in applied science. We are not scientists. So we try to apply technologies in the best matters that suit our clients, our needs, our return on investment, our environment. So all these are put in a bundle, and every time you cross boundaries and you find better solutions, and you prove the case.

What are your thoughts on the HVAC & R industry in the region?
This place is becoming the world capital for air conditioning. The development and scale of projects here are unprecedented in the world. That’s why what’s happening here is 10 times what is happening in the whole of China, which is being viewed as the world’s largest construction site. The requirement for cooling here is massive. It is enormous! District Cooling has come up in a big way. District Cooling companies are testing and trying new technologies. I mean, the scale of the projects, by itself, gives you chances to optimize much more than small plants. Working on a 60,000-TR plant is different from working on a 1,000-TR plant. By working on a big plant, you will look at many technologies, and you will hire the best engineers in the world. I think the HVAC industry is progressing at the fastest rate possible here in this area. People have to catch up. The world has to catch up with the GCC.

What would you like to see improve about the industry?
Very few people in the Middle East dare to cross boundaries.  Also, they say, only five percent of engineers are enlightened enough to see the end results and draw the road map to reach the end point.  As human beings, our brain is created to deal with an easy path.  The easy path is to look at every small detail by itself.  This is a global habit.  Ask any person to form anything – he will start with the small details and try to put them together until he reaches his final goal.  And that goal might change a hundred times.  Very few people are visionary enough to see the end result and then decide on the hundreds of steps needed to reach there.

You were earlier talking about the planetarium project in Dubailand. Could you elaborate on your work?
We will be involved, hopefully soon, with the HVAC and electro-mechanical designs. The planetarium is a concept based on 3D cinema and science museum. So we hope we will be able to do these special types of projects that need attention-to proper sizing, proper distribution and energy conservation. Thousands of people will be going in and coming out, which means there would be a need to vary your systems and your fresh air systems accordingly. This was thought, for example, to be a very large plant. We tried to bring our knowledge where we managed to cut the size of the plant to one quarter or one-third to what originally anticipated.