Dubai municipality inspecting 25,000 buildings under construction

Thousands of buildings under construction in Dubai are currently being inspected by the Dubai Municipality as part of its engineering supervision process.

The process includes inspection and control of all construction works, official news agency WAM reported.

Building permits were issued for various kinds of multi-storied buildings, general and industrial buildings, private villas and investment villas this year.

Permits were also granted for additions, amendments and decoration works.

Khalid Mohammed Saleh, director of Buildings Department at Dubai Municipality said that they receive requests for technical audit of all the projects under implementation.

“During the first half of the year, the municipality received 25,419 requests for structural audit, which is a 20 per cent increase from the number of last year’s requests for the same period,” he said.

“We also received more than 3,000 requests for scrutiny for issuing completion certificates and the first half of the year saw issuance of certificates to 5,837 buildings, whereas the number was 2,906 during the same period last year,” he added.

He added that the increase in the number of requests for technical audit reflected “a positive movement” in the construction sector.

Abdullah Shezawi, head of Engineering Supervision section at the Building Department added that the department undertakes regular inspection at all sites under construction based on the type of technical and construction risks associated with the work stage.

“The electronic system of the Engineering Supervision section fixes the visit dates specified for each site based on the risk study carried out by the section and also by checking with the global best practices in the field,” he said.

A recent report by BMI Research predicted that the UAE’s construction sector would grow by 6.6 per cent this year to reach Dhs162bn.

It is further forecast to expand to Dhs181bn next year.

The report also predicted growth of over 6 per cent for the following three years as Dubai increases spending ahead of Expo 2020.