01
The landlord’s fitout guide
The rules for works on the floor: what may be altered, what must be reinstated at lease end, and which drawings the landlord needs to see before anything starts.
Confirmed withLandlord
Office fitout · Abu Dhabi
Office fitout in Abu Dhabi, run from our Dubai studio.
An office fitout in Abu Dhabi runs through the same four stages we use in Dubai — space planning, approvals, build and furnish — under one contract, from our studio in Al Barsha. What changes is the building and the authority. Their requirements are confirmed at survey, before the programme is fixed and before anything is ordered.
Offices of 2,000–20,000 sqft · design, approvals, build and furniture under one contract
Design & build · Office fitout · Planned from DubaiSince 2011
50+Projects delivered since 2011
2,000–20,000Sqft per floor — the scope we fit out
One contractDesign, approvals, build and furniture
Al Barsha 1Our studio — Dusseldorf Business Point, Dubai
How it runs
The same four stages, planned from Dubai.
Office fitout in Abu Dhabi — the programme, stage by stage.
We run an Abu Dhabi office fitout the way we run one in Dubai: four stages, in order, each closed before the next starts. Space planning takes 4 weeks, approvals 2–4, build 16–18 and furnish 2 — about 6–7 months in all. The approvals window is checked against your building and authority before we commit to it.
- Space planning4 wks
Headcount, workflow and lease dates, then a test fit and a signed plan. The survey of the Abu Dhabi floor happens here.
Approvals2–4 wksLandlord, building and authority packages, submitted on frozen drawings. The window is confirmed for the building first.
Build16–18 wksMEP, partitions, ceilings, joinery and finishes, in that order — phased around the building’s working-hour rules.
Furnish2 wksFurniture, snagging, commissioning and one dated move-in, set against your lease.
The weeks above are our published office programme. For an Abu Dhabi floor, the approvals window becomes a date only once the building and the reviewing authority are confirmed — the six checks below. The full process, stage by stage →
Before the programme
What gets confirmed before a programme is fixed.
Every building sets its own fitout rules, and every emirate its own review path. Before we fix a programme for an Abu Dhabi floor, six things are confirmed in writing with the landlord, building management and the reviewing authority. Until they are, the approvals window is an allowance, not a date.
02
Building management rules
Access, lift bookings, working hours, noisy-work windows and insurance requirements. They set how the build is phased, so they are fixed before the build weeks are.
Confirmed withBuilding management
03
The reviewing authority
Which authority reviews the fitout drawings for this building, what the submission must contain, and how long its review is expected to take. No Dubai route is assumed.
Confirmed withLandlord and authority
04
Contractor requirements
Whether the contractor carrying out the works must hold a registration or approval with that authority or on the building’s list, and what meeting it involves.
Confirmed withAuthority and building
05
Fire and life safety
What the civil defence review needs for the layout: egress, sprinklers, alarms and materials. Partition lines are not frozen until this is known.
Confirmed withAuthority
06
The Cat A condition
What the landlord hands over — raised floor, suspended ceiling, base cooling and lighting, sprinklers — checked on site against the drawings, so the Cat B scope starts from fact.
Confirmed withSurvey
Cost
What an office fitout costs.
Published bands, fenced by scope.
An office fitout in Dubai starts at AED 350 per sqft for shell-to-occupied — partitions, ceilings, flooring, MEP alterations and joinery. Turnkey, with FF&E, IT, AV, automation and appliances included, runs AED 600–850 per sqft. Our last two executive floors landed at AED 726 and AED 840.
These are our published Dubai bands. We publish no separate Abu Dhabi rate: an Abu Dhabi floor is priced on the same basis — surveyed, drawn, then quoted line by line — once the building’s requirements are known.
Proof · Dubai
Two executive floors we delivered in Dubai.
Our proof is in Dubai. IMI at One Za’abeel ran 28 weeks from brief to handover at AED 840/sqft; Opus by Omniyat is contracted at AED 726/sqft and is in its final weeks before handover. Both followed the four stages above, with approvals inside the programme — the method we would bring to an Abu Dhabi floor.
Dubai · design render
File 01 · Dubai
Open the project →IMI @ One Za’abeel, Dubai
- Brief
- One floor where the team can work, move and unwind — sit-stand desks, task chairs that adjust to any body, a wellness room, and a full kitchen to eat and socialise.
- Constraint
- 8 December was a hard stop. The client had given their staff a move-in date and it could not move.
- Solution
- One team from brief to handover: three layout options, fifteen planning rounds to a signed plan, then approvals, build and furniture against the fixed date. Handed over on 8 December 2024, as planned.
- Numbers
- 5,000 sqft · AED 4.2M · 28 weeks · AED 840/sqft
- Area
- 5,000 sqft
- Budget
- AED 4.2M
- Programme
- 28 weeks
- Rate
- AED 840/sqft
Dubai · render
File 02 · Dubai
Open the project →Opus by Omniyat, Dubai
- Brief
- A high-end workplace built as an investment — specified to be sold on, so the money had to show in how the floor works before it showed in finishes.
- Constraint
- A fixed budget to value-engineer against, on a floorplate with very little natural light.
- Solution
- Function priced first, then materials — still high spec, never at the expense of the plan. Glass partitions wherever the layout allowed, so borrowed light reaches the core, and a lighting study behind every fitting specified.
- Numbers
- 6,200 sqft · AED 4.5M contracted · 24-week programme · AED 726/sqft
- Area
- 6,200 sqft
- Budget
- AED 4.5M
- Programme
- 24 weeks, contracted
- Rate
- AED 726/sqft
“Great feeling walking into this beautiful office.”
Abu Dhabi FAQ
Questions before an Abu Dhabi fitout.
Office fitout in Abu Dhabi — FAQ.
01How is an Abu Dhabi office fitout run from Dubai?
Design, drawings, procurement and the programme sit with our Dubai studio, under one contract. The floor is surveyed on site before design starts, and the landlord’s, building’s and authority’s requirements are confirmed before the programme is fixed. The four stages and their order are the same as for a Dubai office.
02How long does an office fitout take?
Our office programme is 6–7 months from brief to handover: 4 weeks space planning, 2–4 weeks approvals, 16–18 weeks build and 2 weeks furnish. For an Abu Dhabi floor, the approvals window is confirmed with the building and the reviewing authority at survey, before the programme is fixed.
03Which approvals does an office fitout in Abu Dhabi need?
It depends on the building. The landlord and building management approve the fitout first; then the authority with jurisdiction reviews the drawings, including fire and life safety. We confirm which authority applies, what it needs and whether the contractor must be registered with it, before we commit to dates.
04What does an office fitout cost?
An office fitout in Dubai starts at AED 350 per sqft for shell-to-occupied — partitions, ceilings, flooring, MEP alterations and joinery. Turnkey, with FF&E, IT, AV, automation and appliances included, runs AED 600–850 per sqft. Our last two executive floors landed at AED 726 and AED 840. We publish no separate Abu Dhabi rate.
05What is the difference between Cat A and Cat B?
Cat A is what the landlord hands over — raised floor, suspended ceiling, base cooling and lighting, sprinklers. Cat B is your office: layout, partitions, meeting rooms, joinery, branding, furniture, AV and the MEP alterations that make the plan work. An office fitout is, in practice, the Cat B scope.
06Can our team keep working during the works?
Where the building allows it. We zone the works, hand each zone back before the next opens, and run loud trades out of hours. For an Abu Dhabi floor, the building’s working-hour and noise rules are confirmed first, because they decide how the build weeks are phased.
Start in the right order
Plan the Abu Dhabi floor before you fix the date.
Tell us about the building, the headcount and the lease dates. We confirm what the building and the authority require, then come back with a scope, a sequence and a number.
Trade licence 648890 · Interior contracting, G+1 approved contractor (Dubai Municipality) · Registered with Emaar, Nakheel, DDA, Trakhees, Dubai Civil Defence · DMCC, DIFC and JAFZA free zones