UAE Building Safety Rules: What Developers Need to Know Now

Tim Elliott (0:00)

It's the Morning Drive, the UAE is tightening the rules around building safety and long-term compliance. It's law number three of 2026 That's what we want to get into now. But what do the new requirements actually mean for developers, for consultants and for building owners?

And could ignoring the smaller, I guess, fire safety issues today lead to major costs tomorrow? Number of questions to put to Elliott Brown, who is the founder of the FDI Group. He's a building safety specialist. He has 20 years of experience in passive fire protection and fire door compliance, and he's just expanded his business into the UAE this year with FDI Consultancy Services, landing on February the 26th. Elliott, welcome.

Elliott Brown (0:48)

Yeah, perfect timing.

Tim Elliott (0:49)

Yeah, very good timing. Nice to have you here. Look, congratulations on the expansion, FDI Group, into here. Let's start with law number 3, 2026

What does it change for developers, for consultants and building owners? And basically, what should they be paying attention to?

Elliott Brown (1:08)

So it's still relatively unknown, but the principle is that it becomes a life cycle compliance status. So buildings with a snapshot of compliance at handover from construction to live building status, now become more magnified across the whole life cycle. So in essence, you are now ongoing compliance audited.

Tim Elliott (1:34)

Okay. Right. I'm with you. So how significant is it in terms of how the region, I suppose the UAE, and how we approach building safety, how we approach ultimately its accountability, isn't it?

Elliott Brown (1:47)

Yeah, for sure. So there's now going to be more impetus on building owners and the facilities management teams to prove compliance on an annual basis.

Tim Elliott (1:58)

Okay.

Elliott Brown (1:59)

And with that, there's a move from the old school paper records to now what is going to be a digitalization of fire and life safety.

Tim Elliott (2:11)

Right. Okay. So with any new legislation, one of the first thing is to understand the legislation and to break it down, obviously. What are the big kind of compliance changes that need to be acted on?

Elliott Brown (2:26)

There's not so much of compliance change. It's always been there. There's always been a requirement to be compliant.

However, what seems to be coming out since March is that actually the passive fire, i.e. the fabric of the building, the doors, the penetrations, the dampers, the stuff that's not visible to the eye every day is now becoming its own specialism or being treated as its own specialism in its own right, which it should be already. Which is a good thing. It's reflecting the UK's shift, post-Gromfell, unfortunately, to the Building Safety Act and the high-risk buildings in the UK, requiring a golden thread of information, which is a digitalization of information.

Tim Elliott (3:20)

Yeah. No, I want to come back to that kind of golden thread idea, because that's important, I think. I mean, it seems like, for years, safety issues have reacted to after you have something, or after final handover, you know, that kind of final inspection. So this framework fundamentally kind of shifts that. So the burden of responsibility is on the developer, you know, the owners, the developers and the asset owners in the kind of life cycle of the building. Is that?

Elliott Brown (3:51)

That's correct, yeah. So we've very much been focused on a point of design and installation.

Tim Elliott (3:57)

Yeah.

Elliott Brown (3:58)

And it's now how are you conducting your PPMs? How are you conducting your ongoing maintenance of products, of systems?

How are you documenting that? And ultimately, that shift is coming away from a very small snapshot in time to the life cycle as we've discussed. So that 10, 20, 30-year compliance life cycle, and how are you proving that?

Tim Elliott (4:21)

Okay. I mean, I suppose like most people, I think of fire safety, you know, I think of alarms and sprinkler systems. But it's more than that.

Your expertise is what's known as passive protection, isn't it? So fire-rated doors, compartmentation, that's the expertise area for you.

Elliott Brown (4:39)

Well, my specialism, I would call it, is doors, is fire doors. I've come from a fire door background, which would then sit within a passive fire protection bracket.

Tim Elliott (4:50)

Right, right.

Elliott Brown (4:52)

We as a company in the UK are the specialist fire door surveyors and consultants. In the UAE, we are full active and passive consultants. So we've built out a team with their own specialisms in-house.

Everyone has their own specific system or component that they generally specify and specialise in. It's the right word.