The Dubai Land Department launched a building classification survey project

The project surveyed 28,835 buildings, 102,523 villas, 61,321 vacant plots, 773 parking lands, and 6,943 under construction land plots.

Last Saturday the Dubai Land Department (DLD) launched a project called Building Classification Survey (BCS) that will cover all 150,000 land plots across the emirate.

It will cover all residential, commercial, industrial and mixed-use plots, making a record achievement after completing the survey of 28,835 buildings, 102,523 villas, 61,321 vacant plots, 773 parking lands, and 6,943 under construction land plots.

With the aim of achieving the highest levels of accuracy in the survey, the project was based on five criteria, including engineering and technical criteria, sustainability, documentation, health and safety, and administration and finance. Each criterion included a number of questions, 64 questions in total.

Each building was then given the appropriate classification in terms of the number of stars it achieves as per the DLD Standard (from 1 to 4 stars). In addition to that, there is a special ‘4 Plus’ category for buildings that meet the highest standards of sustainability. The classification is based on the facilities available and the quality of building maintenance, such as parking, lifts, air conditioning and façade among others.

The project offers a wide range of proactive services and solutions to serve customers in the real estate sector across multiple categories, including investors, owners, tenants, real estate developers, government entities and private sector companies.

The project was implemented through several phases. Phase one included the launch and further development of the project, it lasted for three years from 2015 to 2017. Its goal was to survey all lands beyond freehold areas. Phase two also witnessed development work on the project from 2018 to 2020, surveying all the lands in freehold areas across 75,000 land plots. This required tremendous efforts and included site visits to the properties and the surveying of 45,000 empty land plots using remote sensing and satellite images. In 2021, the final landlord report and building rating was approved. Then the team continued to update the database through site visits and landlord data.

Owners can obtain their classification reports, approve the classification, or request new reports in the event of building maintenance using an app that was created for this purpose.