Zohaib Rahman Promoted to Associate Director, Alucopanel at Danube Group

Zohaib Rahman has been promoted to Associate Director – Alucopanel at Danube Group, marking another step in a career of nearly 20 years in aluminium composite panels, cladding and facade systems. Based in Dubai, his work has taken him across manufacturing, product development, coatings, fire testing, certification and international markets, but his focus today goes beyond the product itself.

Zohaib believes facade safety is a chain of decisions, the right material must be selected, the complete system must be tested, certification should come from an independent accredited third party, the installed facade must be inspected for compliance, and everyone involved from regulators and consultants to manufacturers, contractors and installers should be accountable for the decisions they make.

He is particularly inspired by the UAE approach, where Civil Defence Authority requirements distinguish between individual product approval and approval of the complete facade system, with requirements around accredited testing, certification, project submissions and stakeholder undertakings. Through ACPIA.org, where he is Co-Initiator, Zohaib is working to take this conversation to a wider audience and encourage stronger involvement from regulators and every stakeholder in the facade decision chain.

His belief is that fire safety cannot become simply a race to the lowest cost when the decisions being made affect people who live and work inside buildings. The importance of that responsibility was tragically demonstrated at Grenfell Tower in London, where 72 people lost their lives, the final public inquiry examined failures across the organisations and decisions that allowed the building to reach that condition.

Zohaib also created ACP Reference Library https://lnkd.in/dGrTKFSz to make ACP, cladding, testing, certification and fire safety easier for ordinary people to understand, because these are not subjects only for engineers as we all live, work and spend time in buildings. His philosophy can be summed up in two simple lines “Materials don’t make decisions. People do.” and “Test. Don’t guess.”