Qatar’s Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has signed an agreement with the American National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) for training of recycling workers and research and knowledge exchange on the latest recycling technologies.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Saad bin Ahmed Al Mohannadi, president of Ashghal, and Dr Randy West, director of NCAT, on the sidelines of the fourth road workshop entitled 'Recycling in Road Projects' organised in cooperation with the Italian Company ANAS.

This workshop is part of Ashghal's efforts to achieve sustainable environment, conservation of natural resources and reduction of project cost.

Al Muhannadi said that by the end of 2017, the authority had launched an initiative to use recycled materials in Ashghal projects, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030 and the National Development Strategy 2017-2022.

The initiative was kicked off in January under the supervision of the Ashghal Research and Development Center under the Quality and Safety Department, to use recycled asphalt in the Izghawa Area as part of a road maintenance project.

He added: "Projects in the country need about 2 million tons per month of aggregates, most of which are obtained through imports, while there are about 80 million tons of construction and drilling waste at the Rawdat Rashed landfill, which is an environmental and logistic challenge in the country.”

In cooperation with the Ministry of Municipality and the Environment, Ashghal took the first step to take advantage of these wastes in the projects after recycling. This is in addition to cooperating with Qatar Company for Raw Materials to optimise the use of available resources.

Ashghal is also working on another pilot project for the use of recycled materials from the construction waste at the Rawdat Rashed landfill in a local road project.

Asphalt recycling initiatives and their use in Ashghal projects contribute to the direct reduction in the cost of construction materials from rubble and bitumen, up to 17 per cent, without the cost of indirect costs such as import, transport and other costs.

Khalid Al-Emadi, manager of the quality and safety department in Ashghal, said that this workshop comes within the initiative of the Public Works Authority to recycle its project materials in general and to recycle asphalt layers as well as construction waste and to use iron slag, tyres, and other materials in the implementation of its projects in particular.

"We would like to emphasise that Ashghal has developed an action plan at the beginning of year 2018 in order to implement effective schemes to reduce costs, preserve the environment, and sustain the authority’s projects; in cooperation with many entities, Ashghal made research studies for the reuse of building materials, which proved their economic and practical feasibility and verified that they are consistent with the requirements of specifications and conditions of the state,” Al-Emadi added. – TradeArabia News Service