Conceptor is a design studio in Dubai. We draw offices without building them, so we have no stake in which contractor you pick.
Have you just taken an office floor in Dubai? You now have to hire a company to fit it out. A fit-out is the work that turns an empty floor into one you can sit in. Partitions, ceilings, flooring, lighting, power points, data cabling and air conditioning.
Two parties can rule a company out before you compare any prices. Your landlord, and the government body for your district.
Email your building manager for the fit-out pack first. The building manager runs the tower for the landlord, and your lease names them. The pack is the written rules every tenant gets before work starts.
Ask each company for proof it is registered in your district. A current registration certificate with an expiry date, sent as a PDF. In some districts an unregistered contractor cannot even apply for the permit.
The fit-out company applies for the permit, not you. It needs two things from you first. A copy of your Ejari, and a signed letter naming that company.
Landlord approval covers the design only. The Central Park Towers fit-out manual says so in writing. Approving your design is not approving that the work is legal.
A late drawing costs you rent free weeks. Most office leases give you a few months rent free at the start to get the work done. Those months run whether the work moves or sticks.
Who decides which fit-out companies you are allowed to use?
Three things decide it. The government body for your district says which companies may work there at all. Your landlord keeps a separate list for work that touches the building's shared power, cooling or fire systems. Your lease sets what you have to take out again at the end.
Dubai Healthcare City is a Dubai business district with its own regulator and its own rulebook for tenants. It says this plainly. Its published fit-out guidelines require every contractor working there to register on the district's own portal and win approval first. That comes before starting work, and before even applying for a permit. Only companies holding a valid registration may work inside the district. The registration has to be renewed every year. A company fined three times inside one registration year is barred for a year.
Several other Dubai districts are run as one group by a government body called the Dubai Development Authority. Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Dubai Design District are three of them. There, the contractor is the one who applies for the fit-out permit.
To find your own district's body, look at your Ejari or the top of your lease. Both show the district. Search that district plus the words fit-out guidelines, or ask your building manager which authority covers the tower.
Then start a shortlist of three fit out companies in Dubai. Email your building manager those three names and ask two things. Is each one on the building's approved contractor list? And please send me the building's fit-out pack. Get both answers in writing before anyone visits your office floor.
What is a fit-out pack, and why read it before you sign?
A fit-out pack is the set of rules your building hands a tenant before work starts. It covers what you may change, who may do it, and what you pay the landlord. It also sets the hours your contractor may work. Email your building manager for it while you are still choosing between companies. It tells you what the job costs in building fees before any contractor has quoted.
One Dubai office tower publishes its own, so its numbers can be quoted. Central Park Towers charges a fit-out fee. It is AED 20,000, or AED 4 per square foot plus VAT, whichever is larger. It also takes a security deposit. That is AED 50,000 for a floor of 10,000 square feet or less, and AED 100,000 above that.
The deposit is not cash. It is a cheque with no date written on it. The landlord keeps it, and can cash it if something goes wrong. In that tower's manual the fit-out contractor is the one who hands it over. The contractor claims it back at the end of the defects liability period. That is the months after the contractor finishes and gives the office back to you. Faults are still its job to fix in that time.
Those are one building's numbers, and yours will differ. The landlord's fee and deposit both fall due before any wall moves. Before you sign, make the quote show who pays each one, as its own line.
Once you have three companies, email all three the same two questions. Attach the fee page of your pack. Is the landlord's fit-out fee inside your price? Will you hand over the security deposit cheque yourself? A good answer repeats the fee as its own line, with the amount.
Who applies for the fit-out permit, you or the company?
The company. A fit-out permit is your district authority's written permission to do the work. The Dubai Development Authority names the contractor as the applicant for one. It charges AED 0.90 for every square foot of the area being fitted out. The least you pay is AED 200, the most is AED 10,000.
That authority asks the contractor for five things:
A letter from you appointing the contractor. Ask the contractor for the wording its authority accepts. Sign it and email it back.
A copy of your Ejari. Ejari is the official registration of your tenancy contract. Ask your landlord or your leasing agent for the PDF, then send it to the contractor.
An NOC from the building owner. NOC means no objection certificate, a letter saying the owner does not object to your work. Email your building manager for it.
An NOC from any other authority your work touches. Dubai Civil Defence for fire safety, and DEWA, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, for power and water. Ask your contractor which ones your job needs, and whether its price covers them.
Approved stamped drawings. A design consultant holding a Dubai licence draws your layout and puts its stamp on every sheet. The stamp is that consultant putting its licence behind the drawing.
That last item sets the order of everything else. The drawings are stamped before the contractor applies, not after. No authority accepts a drawing without that stamp. So a photograph of an office you liked will not get you a permit.
What happens to the fire alarm when you move a wall?
The job picks up approvals from outside the building. Dubai Civil Defence is the government body for fire safety. Dubai Healthcare City sorts tenant work into grades, and anything touching fire and life safety is the heavier one. Its rules require Civil Defence to approve the fire drawings before work starts. Those stamped drawings go into the permit file. At the end, Civil Defence inspects and issues a completion certificate.
There is a second cost most tenants miss. Your new fire alarm has to report into the building's central fire panel, the one the building's own staff watch. The same rules put that connection on the tenant, so you pay for it and the landlord does not. Your contractor fits the interface unit that links the two, tests it, and gets Civil Defence to approve it.
Email each company on your shortlist three questions. Who makes the Civil Defence submission? Which of your own employees or subcontractors fits and tests the fire alarm connection? And where does that sit in your price? A good answer gives you the people and an amount. If a company has to go and find somebody, it will find them after you have signed.
What does the landlord's approval actually cover?
The Central Park Towers manual states that final approval is given for design intent only. Design intent is the look and the layout. Making sure the work meets your district authority's rules, and the law, stays your job as the tenant.
The same manual goes further in its liability clause. The landlord employs someone to review tenant work, usually called the fit-out manager. Their review, inspection or approval does not move any responsibility off the tenant. If the work is wrong, it is still your problem.
So the building is checking that your design fits its rules. It is not checking that your contractor built what was drawn. Checking built work against drawings is a separate job, and if nobody is paid to do it, nobody does it. Both rulebooks assume somebody is being paid. That manual requires a supervisor on the floor full time while work is on. Dubai Healthcare City requires an inspection of progress every week.
What can a fit-out company do while other tenants are working?
Shorter days than you expect, because the building is occupied while you build. Central Park Towers sets fit-out working hours at 08:00 to 18:00, Saturday to Thursday. Anything noisier or later needs the building's written approval first.
There is a second, smaller permission as well. Before work starts the contractor files a permit to work with the building's management office. It goes in at least 48 hours ahead, saying what the work is and when. Hot work such as welding needs its own permit. So does working at height.
There is also a dilapidation report. It records your floor in writing and photographs, before anyone touches it. That report settles an argument later about damage that was already there.
Send all three interior fit out companies in Dubai the working hours page from your fit-out pack. Then ask each one how many weeks the job takes inside those hours. The answers will move, and a company whose answer stays the same has not read the rules.
What does your lease make you pay for at the end?
Taking it all out again. The Central Park Towers manual puts that on the tenant. You return the premises to the condition they were in before the fit-out. When the landlord first gave you the empty floor, it recorded the condition on a handover checklist. At the end of the lease it inspects against that same list.
That makes some decisions look different. A glass partition you can unbolt costs less to remove than a solid block wall. Built-in woodwork, such as a reception desk or cupboards fixed into a wall, has to come out. Build what the office needs. Just know which parts you are agreeing to pull out again.
The clock matters too. The same manual says the landlord will not extend the rent free period when the tenant causes the delay. Drawings sent late, drawings rejected and sent again, or a late finish all count. Every week lost that way is a week of free rent gone.
Email your designer and each contractor the same question. Which parts of this design would I have to take out at the end of the lease? A good answer is a list that separates what unbolts from what is built in.
What should you email a fit-out company before you appoint it?
Six questions, in one email to each of the three companies. Written answers sit side by side on one screen.
Are you approved to work in this building and in this district? Ask for two PDFs. The company's current registration with your district's authority, and your building manager's email confirming it is on the approved list.
Who applies for the fit-out permit, and are the fees in your price? The authority fee, the landlord's fit-out fee and the NOC fees. Ask for each one as its own line.
Who makes the Civil Defence submission and fits the fire alarm connection? Get a name, your own employees or a subcontractor, and an amount in the quote.
Will you hand over the building's security deposit cheque, and who claims it back? At Central Park Towers the contractor gives the cheque to the landlord. It claims the cheque back after the defects liability period. Ask for that date in writing.
How many weeks, working only this building's permitted hours? Attach the working hours page so all three price the same limit. A schedule built on longer days will slip.
Who supervises the floor full time, and who checks the built work against the drawings? A good answer gives two different parties. One company answering both is checking its own work.
What does Conceptor do for an office fit-out?
We draw the office and we do not build it. So we take no share of the construction cost, and we get nothing from a bigger build.
The survey of your floor is free. Ask for it through our contact page. We measure the floor and tell you what will fit before you commit to a layout.
You get drawings a contractor can price. A full set, so three companies price the same work and the quotes can be compared.
You see every main space in 3D first. Before anything is ordered, at the size and finish you are buying.
We stay on site until it is finished. Checking the built work against the drawing, while a mistake is still cheap to fix.
We do not profit from the build. A company that designs and builds is checking its own work. We check your contractor's work for you.
Our portfolio includes offices in DIFC, the Dubai International Financial Centre. Also in One Central beside the World Trade Centre, and in Dubai Design District.
Where to start
Email your building manager for two things. The fit-out pack, and the list of contractors the landlord already approves for your building. Read what the pack says about fees, the deposit and working hours.
Then have a design consultant with a Dubai licence draw the office and stamp every sheet. That is the same set the contractor needs for the permit. It is also the only way three quotes price the same work.
Pick three office fit out companies in Dubai from the approved list. Send all three the same drawing set and the six questions above. Put the day you need answers by in the subject line.
If you have quotes already and they do not match, each one priced a different amount of work. Email them to rfp@conceptor.ae and we will tell you what each one left out.
We have a post on what a Dubai fit-out actually costs. It covers the costs that get left out of a first budget. Another covers which authority asks for what, and when.
