YEN MENA AGM 2026

The YEN MENA Annual General Meeting took place on 21 May 2026, marking a meaningful moment to reflect on everything the committee has achieved over the past year and to set the direction for an even stronger year ahead.

The AGM brought together our outgoing and incoming members to review a year filled with impactful events, regional collaborations and growing engagement across the UAE and wider MENA region.

During the session, we welcomed the 2026–2027 YEN MENA Committee, a team committed to building on this momentum with a clear and ambitious action plan for the year ahead. This year’s committee will be chaired by Bushra Siddiqua Oosman, with Gareth Samson serving as Vice Chair.

We were honoured to have Mohd Imran Shaikh, CIBSE MENA Chair, join us for the AGM. His reflections on the region’s progress, along with his motivating words for our new and returning members, set an energising tone for the year to come.

With renewed focus and a strong committee in place, YEN MENA looks forward to a year of growth, collaboration and meaningful connections for young engineers across the region.

We are excited for what lies ahead. Stay tuned for updates on our upcoming initiatives and events.

Industry Insight: Building Services & Sustainability

On 18 June 2026, YEN MENA hosted an online session titled Industry Insights: Buildings & Sustainability, designed to support university students and young engineers with practical career and industry guidance from regional experts.

We were joined by Dan Ferguson, Business Development Manager at Hays Middle East, who provided an overview of current hiring dynamics in the region. He highlighted the skills employers are prioritising, emerging trends in the built environment sector, and how early-career engineers can strengthen their professional toolkit to stay competitive in today’s evolving market.

Complementing this, Aishwarya Chengappa, Senior Sustainability Specialist at Egis, shared practical pathways into the sustainability profession. She discussed the competencies that matter most, the importance of multidisciplinary understanding, and what it takes to stand out in a fast-growing and competitive sustainability landscape.

This session reflects YEN MENA’s ongoing commitment to organising events that genuinely benefit university students and young engineers. By connecting them with industry leaders and offering access to meaningful insights, we aim to empower the next generation of building-services professionals across the MENA region.

Celebrating the CIBSE 30 Under 30 – 2026 Winners from the MENA Region

This year’s CIBSE 30 Under 30 list features exceptional young professionals from across the globe, and we are proud to share that four engineers from the MENA region have been recognised for their outstanding contributions to the built-environment sector.

Among them are three members of the YEN MENA Committee, reflecting the strength, dedication and growing influence of young engineers within our regional community.

The 2026 winners from the MENA region include:

• Bushra Siddiqua Oosman – recognised in the Technical Excellence category

• Gareth Samson – awarded in the Sustainability Champion category

• Suvarna Kumar – awarded in the Sustainability Champion category

• Athiya Junaid – recognised in the Digital & Automation Innovators category

Their achievements highlight the depth of talent emerging from the region and the impact young engineers are making across technical, sustainability and digital innovation disciplines.

You can read more about the 2026 winners and their contributions in the latest edition of the CIBSE Journal.

Upcoming CIBSE MENA Events

CIBSE YEN MENA has an exciting programme of events planned for the remainder of the year, continuing our commitment to creating meaningful technical and social experiences for young engineers across the region.

YEN MENA Trivia Night

Our Winter Social will be returning — and, just like last year, it will come with a technical twist. This year’s Winter Social will once again take the form of our popular YEN MENA Trivia Night, now returning for its second edition.

The session blends friendly competition with building-services knowledge, offering a fun and engaging way for young engineers and university students to connect with peers from across the MENA region.

Participants can expect an evening of brain-teasing questions, lively discussions and plenty of laughs as we explore all things building services in a relaxed, social setting.

The event is open to university students and early-career engineers, providing a welcoming space to learn, network and build community.

More details on the Trivia Night will be shared soon — stay tuned.

Technical Session: HVAC & Cooling in the MENA Region

Alongside our social events, YEN MENA is also preparing a technical session focused on HVAC and cooling in the MENA region, exploring the challenges, innovations and future pathways shaping one of the region’s most critical engineering disciplines.

This session is scheduled for September, with full details to be announced shortly.

We look forward to welcoming students and young professionals to these upcoming events and continuing to build a vibrant, supportive community for early-career engineers across the region.

Snippets from last year’s Trivia Night.

CIBSE MENA Podcast Series

The CIBSE MENA Podcast Series continues to grow as a regional platform for knowledge-sharing, professional development and industry insight. CIBSE MENA has successfully recorded and released three episodes, each highlighting a different aspect of the building-services landscape in the Middle East.

Our first episode, Applied Research & the Education Landscape in the Middle East, explored how academic research and industry collaboration are shaping the future of engineering in the region.

The second episode, Diversity & Inclusion in Building Services, brought forward important conversations on representation, equity and the cultural dynamics influencing our profession.

We also released an exclusive collaborative episode with James Mowat from Energi People, where he discussed hiring trends in the MENA region, the value of Chartership and the benefits of being associated with professional bodies such as CIBSE.

Looking ahead, CIBSE MENA is preparing to launch a new episode in August, sponsored by ENGIE, titled Designing and Operating Data Centres for Zero Downtime.

This episode introduces listeners to the fundamentals of mission-critical design and the engineering principles behind facilities built to operate continuously. More details will be shared once the episode is published.

Beyond this, we have an exciting pipeline of episodes planned for the upcoming year. These will explore themes such as:

• Transitioning from university to industry

• Lessons learned from mega-projects in the Middle East

• Digital engineering and emerging technologies

• Networking and career development

• Spotlights on rising young engineers across the region

These topics reflect the breadth of expertise within CIBSE MENA and our commitment to supporting both students and professionals through relevant, high-impact content.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue expanding the CIBSE MENA Podcast Series and bringing valuable conversations to our community.