What a clinic fit-out costs, and what DHA asks for.

Published figures for medical fit-out in Dubai run from roughly AED 600 to AED 1,200 per square foot, and small-clinic totals are quoted anywhere between AED 300,000 and AED 1.5 million. Both ranges are too wide to plan against, because a clinic is not priced by area — it is priced by how much of it is clinical. Our worked example below prices a 150 square metre, four-room GP clinic line by line: AED 207,670 of measured building work, or about AED 152 to AED 161 per square foot turnkey once preliminaries, supervision and contractor’s overhead are added. Medical gas, radiation shielding, sterilisation equipment and clinical furniture sit on top of that — and they are the reason published figures reach AED 600 and beyond. Those are project costs, not building costs. A dental or day-surgery unit of the same size costs substantially more than a GP clinic, and the reason is services, not finishes.

Five gates, in sequence. A building NOC from the landlord or owners' association; the DHA inactive facility licence applied for through the Sheryan portal, with layout drawings showing reception, waiting, consultation, treatment, sterilisation and clinical waste zones; a Dubai Municipality fit-out permit on architectural and MEP drawings; Dubai Civil Defence approval of the fire and life-safety drawings before construction legally starts; and after the build, the DHA pre-licensing inspection that converts the inactive licence to active. A free zone such as Dubai Healthcare City substitutes its own authority for the municipality stage. Requirements change — we confirm the current set against DHA and the relevant authority at survey rather than working from a checklist.

The drawings. This is where most first-time clinic owners lose a month. The DHA inactive licence is applied for on layout drawings, and in practice it needs to be in hand before the municipality permit progresses — so the design has to be right for the clinical standards before anyone prices a partition. Build first and you risk reconfiguring rooms that fail inspection. We produce the measured survey and space plan against the clinical standards, then submit, then build.

That is the specific thing we do. Roughly half of what we have delivered has been executed in premises that stayed open, including occupied government hospital wards under ICRA and PCRA infection-control protocols — hoarding, dust screening, negative-pressure zones set up before an area is opened, and clinical space handed back zone by zone. Sheikh Khalifa General Hospital has awarded us thirteen separate scopes across five trades on that basis.

Because it is a sealed system, not a floor covering. Homogeneous sheet vinyl is laid over a ground, levelled and moisture-tested substrate, every seam is heat-welded, and the sheet is coved 100 mm up the wall with a capping strip so there is no open junction anywhere in the room. That is what makes it cleanable to clinical standards, and it is why the rate is AED 165 per square metre rather than AED 95. Skipping the moisture test is the single most common cause of a clinical floor failing within two years.

Build is four to eight weeks for a straightforward GP or dental unit. Approvals are the variable and usually the longer half: municipality review runs 10 to 30 working days, Civil Defence and the DHA inspection sit either side of construction, and anything with imaging, an operating theatre or radiation equipment adds a FANR route of its own. Budget three to four months end to end for a first licence, and expect the drawings, not the builders, to set the date.

Yes — survey, space plan, the submission drawings and the submittals themselves, priced at AED 2,500 per submission in the rate card below. We run them in parallel with pricing rather than after award, which is normally where two to three weeks are recovered.