His Highness Prince Dr. Turki bin Saud bin Mohammed Al Saud, President of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, opened the work of the Saudi International Conference on Building and Construction Technologies 2015 organized by the city at its headquarters yesterday, stressing that the building and construction sector in the Kingdom ranks second after oil in contributing to the gross domestic product. His Highness noted that the city pays great attention to the building and construction sector by supporting scientific research and technical development in this field to meet development requirements and supporting Saudi universities in all regions of the Kingdom, in addition to establishing the National Center for Building Technology. <Prince Turki praised the technical and economic development in the Kingdom and the abundance of natural resources as one of the most important factors that led to the promotion and revitalization of this sector, which enhances the competitiveness of the Kingdom and achieves sustainable economic development in many sectors that depend on the building and construction sector such as industry, transportation, water, energy, health, education and others.

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The president of the city extended his thanks and appreciation to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz, his Crown Prince, and the Deputy Crown Prince - may Allah protect them - for the generous and continuous support received by the science, technology and innovation sector, which resulted in achieving many achievements in the field of supporting and implementing scientific research, planning and implementation to develop the national system for science, technology and innovation, and building national human capabilities, which will contribute to realizing the vision of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to build a knowledge-based economy.

<For his part, the Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the conference, Dr. Haitham bin Abdullah Al-Oudan, said that the conference is of vital importance as the development in the Kingdom is moving at a rapid and amazing pace, especially in the building and construction sector, as the Kingdom is the largest building and construction market in the Middle East region and is one of the fastest growing markets in the world.The conference seeks to discuss the latest innovations and developments in building and construction technologies through several axes, namely the Saudi Building Code, which will address this axis to support the application of the Saudi Building Code in the building and construction sector in the Kingdom and benefit from Gulf experiences in applying requirements and requirements that take into account engineering standards for design, construction, operation and maintenance.

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<The conference also discusses in its second axis green construction materials, where some unique international programs will be presented in the exploitation of natural resources and their use as applicable sustainable building materials, and the application of smart buildings in accordance with the environmental conditions of the Kingdom, indicating that the third axis is sustainable technologies in buildings, where this axis will discuss the development of environmentally friendly building and construction technologies based on the latest research and technical development and help transform buildings into environmentally friendly buildings by increasing efficiency and rationalizing energy consumption and reusing and developing construction waste, in addition to the fourth axis.