Tribune News Network
Honeywell has announced DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Doha as Qatar's Smartest Building at the Middle East's first-ever smart building awards presentation at the Innovation Live! Summit in Dubai. The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel also picked up the award for the Middle East's Smartest Hotel Building.
In addition, Doha's leading sports and education destination, Aspire Zone Foundation, was named as the region's smartest educational facility.
The Honeywell Smart Building Score Awards programme, developed by Honeywell, a Fortune 100 global technology and Internet of Things (IoT) leader, assessed the smartness of buildings across the region based on how green, safe and productive they are. The awards recognise the leading smart buildings in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and assessed hotels, hospitals, educational and retail facilities as well as the leading high-rise office and residential buildings in the region.
The awards are designed to help drive innovation and the 'smart cities' agenda in Qatar and across the Middle East in line with regional development strategies. Shortlisted entries for the Honeywell Smart Building Score Awards were independently audited by global advisory firm Ernst & Young, where DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel achieved the highest evaluation among all entries from Qatar, with impressive scores across all three smart building categories.
"As Qatar's smartest building, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Doha is setting the benchmark and is a best practise example for building innovation not only in Qatar but also across the Middle East," said Honeywell's Middle East, Russia and Central Asia President Norm Gilsdorf."Qatar is well on its way to meeting the smart city ambitions outlined in the Qatar National Vision 2030, the result demonstrates that the country encompasses innovation into the very foundations of its cities."
The 2016 awards are the culmination of the Middle East's first Honeywell Smart Building Score (HSBS) the first-of-its-kind universal framework designed for the comprehensive assessment of any building launched in March of this year. The HSBS framework was used to evaluate 620 buildings across seven major Middle East cities: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Doha, and Kuwait City.