The Regent Hotel

Peter and I arrived at the Regent Hotel at the fringe of the Singapore downtown core. Upon entering the building, we marvelled at the high ceilings, large skylights and the beautifully designed elevators that looked like stylized capsules in the middle of the atrium. When we met Mr. Lee Baharrudin, Director of Engineering, he told us that the Regent was actually one of the first atrium designed hotels in Singapore.

Mr. Baharuddin was clearly passionate about sustainability and had a long history in the industry. He was able to tell us how the practices had changed within the hotel, and things that they were looking into in the future. As with other hotels we had visited, energy and water were large focuses at the Regent as well. Almost all the lighting within the hotel had been replaced with LED lighting, even including the exit signs in the hallways. Energy efficiency had also been improved recently with the installation of a heat recovery system that reclaimed heat from the chilling and boiling system. The entire development made use of NEWater, another trend we have noticed throughout the other hotels we had visited. In Singapore, there is a tax incentive for developments that use NEWater; NEWater is water has been recycled through reverse osmosis, preventing the need for Singapore to import water from Malaysia as had been done in the past. In the future, the Regent is looking into installing solar panels and a food composting system.
After our interview and on-site tour, Mr. Baharrudin was so kind to take us out for lunch at a food court nearby. He expressed his interest in helping and education students and mentioned that he had trained several engineering students in the past. He was really supportive of us, and offered his help in any way that we needed. For lunch we had Indian food, and as usual while eating, Peter was super happy! As was I. We left the our meeting with full stomachs and a new contact that we hope to stay in touch with once we return to Canada.