Imposing green building regulations in Dubai

In 2008, Dubai announced its plan aiming to introduce mandatory green building regulations for all new buildings starting 2014. So far, Dubai has only voluntary rating systems such as LEED and BREEAM. This research aims to investigate the anticipated benefits and implicated challenges from imposing the green building regulations on the construction industry in Dubai; primarily seeking to facilitate the planned move through effective recommendations on how to proactively manage the identified challenges. The literature review aimed to compare and contrast the implementation practices for the mandatory regulations versus the voluntary rating systems, and the implicated challenges from imposing the green building regulations in general, and specifically in Dubai. The study applied a stepwise methodology embracing an online survey utilising a questionnaire sent to 150 professionals in Dubai who are involved in regulating and implementing the green regulations. The second step comprised a set of interviews with experts to discuss the findings of the survey and suggest recommendations to address the identified challenges, proactively. A statistical analysis was applied to the survey dataset whereas a content analysis was applied to the interviews dataset. The key findings of the study indicated that experts within the construction industry are still sceptical about green practices due to the perceived higher costs. This reflected the lack of awareness besides the minimal involvement of private sector in setting the green building regulations, amongst other challenges. Many Professional preferred the voluntary systems due to the perceived rigidity of the intended regulations and the reviewers from the regulatory bodies. The study concluded that the government, in order to can enhance the implementation of the green building regulations in Dubai, needs to introduce effective measures to promote the green building initiative to all categories of stakeholders; both the supply side and the demand side meanwhile increasing the involvement of the private sector in the consultation process leading to the release of the new regulations.