DOLMEN CERTIFICATES
The U.S. Green Building Council sets a high bar for sustainability. The USGBC LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification program helps organizations plan and build green buildings and measures and assess the success of green building projects. This certification program also recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices.
To receive LEED certification, building projects need to satisfy green building prerequisites and earn points for sustainability. The more points a building earns the higher its level of certification. Points can be earned across nine categories and teams choose the credit categories that best fit a particular project. These categories include:
- Sustainable Sites
- Energy and Atmosphere
- Indoor Environmental Quality
The Spot Choueifat shopping mall opened to the public in 2017. This mall was designed by Design Novel Architecture, Dolmen, and Avoca. The building has a 3000 m2 and 34 m span grid shell made by Lanik. Despite its common span, the design of the structure became challenging due to the boundary conditions.
The skylight is supported on 7 different blocks joined by a courtyard. When seismic loads are applied to the concrete structure, each block has different behavior. Therefore, big relative displacements are overtaken between the top parts of the blocks, up to 200 mm. This became one of the main restrictions for the structural design.
Finally, some sliding supports had a special design too. The aforementioned large displacements and uplift caused by the wind required them. Supports had to allow 150 mm of displacement in each horizontal direction and had to retain the structure when the uplift happened.
ISO 9001 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family that can be certified (although this is not a requirement). It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity. There are over one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries certified to ISO 9001.
This standard is based on several quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach, and continual improvement. These principles are explained in more detail in ISO’s quality management principles. Using ISO 9001 helps ensure that customers get consistent, good-quality products and services, which in turn brings many business benefits.
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