Dubai Municipality has launched a project to develop an AI system that can issue building permits for private and investment villas without human review.
The system will read submitted drawings and documents, check them against the Dubai Building Code, and assess plot planning, architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing requirements. It will then generate the building card automatically.
According to Dubai Municipality, the system will reduce permit issuance times from days to minutes once it is rolled out across the emirate’s engineering consultancy firms. Applicants will also be able to run pre-submission design checks and receive instant decisions.
The project will be delivered in three phases over 26 weeks. These include building and testing the AI agent, running a pilot with selected engineering consultancies, and rolling it out for all villa permit applications through Dubai Municipality’s Build in Dubai platform.
The initiative follows the digitisation of Dubai’s building permit process in 2023, which introduced online document submission and automated compliance checks but still required staff review and sign-off. The new system is intended to handle routine assessments automatically, with manual reviews limited to exceptional cases.
Source: Middle East AI News
