Shashi Narayanan: Helping Qatar Deliver On Its Promise Of A Sustainable FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

Q: Every company has a personalized approach to its energy strategy. It could fit into many streams and/or philosophies including passive, aggressive, profit maximization, etc. They also have the right to choose whether they would like it to be proactive and public or built into the vision & goals of the company. When working on projects for your own organization, what is the strategy you feel works best to balance various resources such as profitability, sustainability, and Net Zero goals as well as time?

 A: As we are living in an unprecedented time of climate emergency, where the UN has declared a “code red” warning for the catastrophic effects of unabated carbon emissions, which will affect every aspect of our survival on this planet. There is no longer a choice of whether organizations need to act, there is a definite and unequivocal requirement to act immediately to define a future that addresses the existential threat of our age. 

At WSP, a low energy approach is incorporated into all our projects, we integrate a Future Ready strategy to ensure that our finished projects are robust enough to deal with the challenges of a heating world. By using science-based targets, we encourage clients and project stakeholders to adopt strategies that have been developed to reduce carbon emissions in a verified way. If these are incorporated from the very beginning and are part of the DNA of a project, there is no “extra” or hidden cost. It has already been calculated that the cost of taking action now is far less than the cost of doing nothing at all. 

When creating any building or infrastructure project, I use the simple analogy of creating a house with a roof covering and protecting the building. Sustainable strategies need to be fully embedded into the design and construction of the house with the same level of importance as providing it with a roof. There would obviously be no question as to whether the house needs a roof! 

The same level of importance needs to now be attached to the house’s sustainable construction. Working closely with our clients from the earliest stages of the design process helps to ensure that the most optimal sustainable approach is adopted, that takes on board the sustainability of the finished asset, as well as its resource and carbon impact over its lifetime. It’s very important for all companies to move forward to address these issues seriously, incorporating fundamental sustainable drivers into their way of working, this is no longer a “nice to have” the balance of resources needs to reflect this, it’s time for code red emergency action.

Q: Please tell us more about FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022^TM sustainability initiatives that helped Qatar realise its waste management and Net Zero goals? 

A: I have had the enormous privilege of leading the team that verifies the sustainability rating for two stadiums: Lusail Stadium and Stadium 974, ensuring that delivery teams have incorporated the sustainable requirements of the Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS: green building certification standard. 

This is Qatar’s indigenous certification programme that has been accepted by FIFA to measure the sustainability of the stadiums and the environmental impact while the construction process was taking place. The GSAS programme incorporates 52 performance criteria covering the entire spectrum of sustainability drivers, ranging from energy usage, water reduction, occupant comfort, and the provenance of materials used. 

Unlike other green building certifications such as LEED and BREEAM, GSAS includes a construction stage audit process after the design stage. During this phase, third-party auditors from the Gulf Organization of Research and Development (GORD:, the agency tasked with certifying the GSAS programme, examine the progress of the construction works ensuring that the design stage sustainability aspirations have been incorporated into the finished building. 

This rigorous approach delivers exceptional levels of green building, with a very high burden of proof to verify the sustainability levels that are being claimed, it also ensures that all parts of the delivery chain from design to construction and operations thereafter are embed sustainability in an interconnected way from the very beginning of the process.  

The Net Zero energy status of all the FIFA stadiums will be achieved by a new solar power renewable energy network that is being built in the western Qatari desert in Al Kharsaah. 

Our client, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC:, has also committed to a Net Zero plastic waste World Cup, by partnering with all the stakeholders and competition vendors to reduce the amount of plastic used, especially in the F&B delivery. 

The SC is also partnering with an NGO, which will remove the equivalent quantity of plastic waste from the sea, as is projected to be generated over the course of the whole tournament. This harvested sea plastic will then be transformed into recycled plastic products or sold as raw material back into the production chain, thereby avoiding the need to create virgin plastic from carbon-intensive oil extraction. This is the first time this kind of initiative has been attempted at any World Cup and will be an important case study to address the issue of plastic waste creation. 

One of the unique aspects of the FIFA World Cup 2022^TM in Qatar is the creation of the world’s first fully demountable football stadium: Stadium 974 addresses one of the key sustainability dilemmas that have plagued large sporting tournaments, that of post-tournament legacy usage. How can this level of resource and energy use be justified for one tournament? What is to be done with the venue after the event has occurred, at a time when that much stadium capacity is no longer required? A credible solution to this has just been constructed in Doha, a fully demountable stadium formed from shipping containers and modular structural steel elements that can be reconstructed in different locations, in a variety of different configurations. This ground-breaking design leads the way toward more sustainable and legacy-driven sporting competitions, opening the opportunity for countries to host large-scale tournaments all over the world.

Q: What do you feel are the key elements of sustainability when embarking on projects in the Middle East? What are the 3 challenges facing the ME project’s market from a sustainability standpoint and how do you feel they can be overcome?

A: The scarcity of water is a fundamentally key issue when building in the Middle East, most of the water is generated from seawater, which is an energy-intensive process and leads to polluting by-products. Any project claiming to be sustainable needs to have water conservation at its very core, understanding how to reduce water usage in all aspects of the design needs to be considered from the earliest planning stage of the project. Taking on board opportunities to re-use and optimise water delivery for all the functions required.

Material choice, I would say would be the second biggest challenge. The age of buildings being clad exclusively in glass needs to come to an end. This material is problematic when used in an extreme desert environment that has excessive sunshine throughout the year. A considered approach to façade design needs to be rediscovered, one that lets the sun inside in a very controlled way, allowing in natural daylight but not allowing excessive heat to penetrate the building. Such an approach reduces the amount of cooling a building need from its air-conditioning.

The re-use and upgrading of existing buildings are another major challenge but is also an immense opportunity for the Middle East. The retrofitting and upgrading of existing buildings seldom occur, with a preference to demolish buildings and start with a clean site. This is problematic for many reasons, the most important of which is the embodied carbon impact.

Q: What do you think of the recently revealed UK's path to Net Zero set out in its new landmark strategy?

A: The recently published strategy demonstrates immense ambition. As far as I’m aware the UK strategy does not include enough evidence that it is being funded properly by the current government. The treasury review that accompanies the Net Zero strategy states:” The cost of global inaction significantly outweighs the cost of action” Whilst the aims of the Net Zero by 2050 strategy are ambitious and send a positive signal for change, they need to match the ambitions with resources to deliver the ambition. Unfortunately, the UK is documented as having the lowest rate of investment to deliver its Net Zero strategy amongst all the G7 countries.

Q: Where do you say the region has seen its biggest success in ‘sustainability’? And how do you see the rest of the region collaborating & supporting regional sustainability and carbon neutrality initiatives?

A: From my experience, one of the biggest success stories in the ME market would be the uptake of sustainability certifications across all sectors of the built environment. This has created an increased and visible level of sustainability awareness with the general public and across the business community. With easy-to-digest rating systems that communicate the “level of greenness” for what is often a dry and impregnable technical subject, in an easy to understand and palatable way. Notable examples such as Education City in Doha, which has the highest density of LEED Gold certified buildings in the world, demonstrate to the entire world how these performance standards help buildings, and their users cope within an overheating environment.

In terms of regional sustainability collaboration, the GSAS certification system has already been adopted in other countries other than Qatar, with the commencement of certified projects in both Kuwait and Sudan. It is hoped that there will be wider acceptance and mutual recognition of every green building certification, i.e., Estidama, Mostadam, Al Sa’fat, etc. across all the countries in the Middle East region. 

It would also be good to witness the flourishing of sustainable retrofitting projects that focus on reinvigorating existing buildings and lowering their carbon impact.

Q: Please tell us what you feel would be the one positive change in the projects market that could help raise the global standard on sustainability and reduce the impact of climate change?                              

A: In my view the only way to create positive change that could help raise the global standard is to make these requirements mandatory, an inescapable legal requirement. A requirement that all built environment and retrofit projects must follow. Unfortunately, the “market” does not adjust to reality or provide the change that is required at this time in species development. The technology, programmes, and innovation are currently available and have all been shown to work for a long time. 

The factor that is absent is the wholesale adoption of these requirements at the level that the climate emergency demands. I often use the analogy of the UK workplace smoking ban in 2006, it led to an immediate reduction in smoking in the population and removed the passive smoking risks in internal workplace environments. This only happened because it was made a legal requirement that every workplace had to comply with. The same principle now needs to be unequivocally applied to addressing the climate emergency and reducing the carbon impact of the built environment, which has been calculated to be around 40% of total carbon emissions. 

This applies to integrating sustainability into a multitude of built environment assets from buildings to all types of infrastructure. For the latter, certifications such as CEEQUAL have been applied to many different infrastructure elements such as bridges, roads, drainage networks, etc. and have helped to reduce the impact of climate change and increased the sustainability standard during the varied phases of the project

Q: And finally, could you tell us about your favorite city and book. 

A: The city where I was raised, London, will always be my favorite, but Vienna has a very special place in my heart as it’s one of the places where I’ve had my most memorable adventures. The city is laid out at such a grandiose scale with huge tree-lined boulevards all in keeping with its’ historic status as the centre of an empire. It also has intimate town squares and plazas where you can while away your time drinking exquisite coffee at the ubiquitous cafes, whilst also sampling some of the best cakes your Euro can buy. The Naschmarkt in the centre of the city originates from the sixteenth century and has hundreds of stalls offering every type of cuisine it’s a great place to grab some brunch and catch up with friends. The city has many examples of very old buildings and the very new side by side, it is very easy to read the historic layers of the city, this is expressed most elegantly at the Museums Quartier which has an amazing collection of galleries and exhibitions located in expansive courtyards.

My favorite book is Jan Kaplicky Drawings, by Richard Rogers and Ivan Margolius which documents the exceptional drawings of the late Czech architect and founder of the firm Future Systems. This book documents some of Kaplicky’s visionary projects and visual essays, many showing cut-away 3 dimensional sections all drafted by hand at a time before CAD or BIM computer-assisted drafting. Showcasing design ideas and concepts for different ways of living and occupying space, Kaplicky was a master storyteller using the medium of photomontage to create compelling images of different realities.

I’m also currently reading Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain, by Sathnam Sanghera, which is an illuminating study of how modern Britain is very much rooted in its imperial past. The book reveals bewildering contradictions and examines the very idea of Britishness, helping everyone to understand who the British are and what it is that unites them as a people.