The Preparatory Symposium for the Second International Sustainability and Resilience Conference (PS4SR) was hosted on the 25th and 26th of February 2020 at The Ritz Carlton, Bahrain. The event brought together practitioners, academic professors, researchers, engineering offices, real estate developers, trainers and policy makers to learn from each other through panel discussions, workshops and networking.  

An accompanying symposium was held at the University of Bahrain from the 23rd to the 24th of February 2020 with more than 350 delegates from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Malaysia and overseas have attended.  

The main objective behind PS4SR was to bring together, reflect and consider what opportunities and improvement services can be implied on the real estate sector. Attendees from several sectors were present including investment, engineering, academics, and technology.  

Partners and sponsors included – Itqaan tatweer and development, Ministry of works, municipalities affairs and urban planning, Bin Faqeeh Real Estate Investment Company S.P.C., University of Bahrain, Diyar Al Muharraq. Partners engaged and networked with the diverse participants, showcased their work, while contributing to the future of developing engineering resources.  

Some of the session topics included Higher education outcomes in BIM and its role in developing the market to achieve sustainability, The 4th industrial revolution and project management, operation and maintenance applications and more.  

Some of the major forum goals and outputs were:  

Launch of a quality initiative: “Engineers for Sustainability”  

Training and qualifying engineers with some of the modern equipments  

Submitting worksheets during the forum to encourage sustainable building 

Through the slogan “Towards Innovation and Technology in building designs” and with the drive to find new solutions for upcoming challenges; speakers and attendees had the opportunity to encourage some of the joint efforts between different parties to upgrade through building a sustainable real estate sector. Through conferences and seminars like these as well as through inquisitive research and the call for knowledge, we can understand thus help and invest through adopting sustainable building ideas thus developing the field of sustainable development in general.