The Building Regulation & Permits Agency’s role in Dubai’s Happier City vision

The Building Regulation & Permits Agency (BRPA) is a new agency within Dubai Municipality. It was established to amalgamate five departments, responsible for planning, permitting, and construction control:

1. Executive Planning
2. Building Permit
3. Building Activities Control
4. Survey
5. Geospatial Information Systems Center (GISCD)

BRPA’s objective is "to deliver one of the safest built environments in the world, deliver world-class planning, permitting, and construction control services, and the creation of high-definition geospatial information and digital twin of the built environment to support this."

It wanted to unify these departments and modernise its delivery of services to its public and private sector stakeholders, to help improve effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the organisation, to ensure it delivers value for money.

This organisational optimisation would consider key elements such as:

• Business and operating models.
• Legal and regulatory frameworks.
• Funding and investment priorities.
• Delivery and operational vehicles (private organisations, government companies etc).
• Technology choices.

Having successfully delivered multiple transformation projects with Dubai Municipality, and in recognition of our ability to identify and work with other strategic partners, Ordnance Survey was asked to help with the formation of the new BRPA and its target operating model.

In order to do this, Ordnance Survey (OS) first identified a key strategic partner in the British Standards Institute (BSI) to support this programme of work. Together, OS and BSI undertook an extensive engagement with stakeholders across Dubai's public and private sectors to deliver:

• An Operating Model Feasibility Assessment - covering the five Agency departments of GISCD, Surveying, Executive Planning, Building Permitting, and Building Control - and based on international best practice.
• An optimal model(s) for the future operation of the Agency.
• A prioritised roadmap for the implementation of the operating model(s).
• Key elements of the roadmap through the development of a world-class Building Risk Model for Dubai, and the establishment of building safety patrols to help identify risks to public safety in relation to buildings and their environment.

The BRPA/OS collaboration resulted in the BRPA implementing two operating models; to enhance its commercial footprint, and to explore revenue opportunities available in the immediate and medium term. This decision enabled BRPA to:

1. Establish a sustainable organisation operating as one Agency, rather than five separate departments.
2. Unlock new opportunities to generate more revenue through services, data assets, and resources.
3. Define a safer built environment, through identification of high-risk buildings and 24hr patrols identifying building violations - a world-first initiative of this kind.