Five Minutes With… Sam Alawiye, CEO, GreenParking

Can you describe the services offered by Green Parking?

GreenParking offers a full range of parking needs: design, consultancy, installation, operations and valet parking. We also provide various options to bring your ‘old’ car park back to life.

Our parking management concept relies on environment-friendly access media, such as parkchips for visitors, contactless cards for employees and long-range cards for VIPs as an option. We are now present in more than 100 locations in the UAE and are the most installed parking system in the country.

One of the solutions you offer is EV-chargers (at electric vehicles charging stations). Do you expect to see an uptick in electric vehicle usage in the UAE?

Yes, since Dubai is planning Smart City projects, which will be served by electricity-charged vehicles. The development of smart technologies will increase and more people will be thinking about environmental-friendly solutions.

What are the main challenges that the UAE faces in terms of road mobility?

The major challenge in the region is extreme climate and weather conditions. The car park design and equipment has to be reliable enough to withstand frequent heat waves, sandstorms and harsh sun impact. Therefore, what is considered to be appropriate for car parks located in Europe not necessarily will work here, in the GCC region.

Another challenge is the time. The number of cars is increasing in the UAE’s streets every single day, but the number of parking spaces is insufficient. Millions of people in the Emirates and across the globe suffer from stress associated with this problem.

The situation can get even worse in shopping malls, trade centers or restaurants where people usually come to get rid of stress, not to get it. Each day a single driver cruises more than 400m to find a free parking space, making it more than 12km of distance per month, which approximately equals to 1L of gasoline spent!

Are you looking at launching any new services or expanding operations regionally in 2015?

Our strategy is to implement more innovative ideas that make parking more efficient and environmental friendly, by further establishing our presence and operations activities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the rest of the UAE.

We are also trying to expand the range of our operations services, which now includes value-added services such as car park advertising, green-car-wash, security, patrolling and concierge services, as well as system maintenance services.