What a warehouse conversion actually costs.

There is no single rate, and anyone quoting one for a whole unit is guessing. A warehouse has two completely different cost bases inside one building. The office and amenity block prices like an office: from about AED 90 per square foot for a basic staff block to AED 180 per square foot and up for a fitted office or showroom standard. The warehouse floor prices at around AED 17 per square foot, because it is substrate preparation, a resin floor, high-bay lighting and fire services and almost nothing else. Blend the two across the 10,000 square foot unit in our worked example and you get about AED 35 per square foot — true for that unit, misleading for any other, because it depends entirely on how much of the floor plate is office and to what standard.

Because the ratio between them is the single biggest variable in an industrial job, and a blended rate hides it. A 10,000 square foot unit with a 1,000 square foot site office is a different project from the same shell with a 4,000 square foot showroom and mezzanine offices, and the difference is several hundred thousand dirhams. Price the two areas on their own bases and the estimate survives a change of layout. Price it per square foot of total area and it does not.

On mainland Dubai: a fit-out or building permit from Dubai Municipality on architectural and MEP drawings, Civil Defence approval of the fire and life-safety drawings before construction starts, a DEWA application where the electrical load or metering changes, and certified disposal of demolition waste to an approved facility. In a free zone — JAFZA, DAFZA, Dubai South, Dubai Industrial City, Dubai Investments Park, or RAKEZ and SAIF in the northern emirates — the zone authority replaces the municipality and runs its own contractor registration and works permit. Trakhees governs several Jebel Ali and Dubai World Central areas. Mezzanines, racking over a certain height, and any change of activity bring additional review. We confirm which route applies at survey, because the wrong one costs weeks.

Usually, and it is one of the most common scopes we price — but it is a structural and fire question before it is a fit-out question. A mezzanine changes floor loading, escape travel distances and the sprinkler and detection design, and it needs structural drawings and Civil Defence sign-off, not just a partition layout. We survey the slab and the existing fire strategy first and tell you what the unit will actually carry.

Six to twelve weeks on site for a straightforward 10,000 square foot conversion, with the resin floor as the critical path — substrate preparation, moisture testing, application and cure cannot be compressed, and nothing else can be happening on that slab while it runs. Approvals add four to eight weeks in parallel. A free-zone contractor registration, if we do not already hold one for that zone, is worth checking at the start rather than at week three.

Because in a warehouse the floor is the structure you use. In the worked example below, preparation and resin together are about a quarter of the whole project — and that is the right place for the money. A resin floor laid over an untested slab lifts, and relaying it means emptying the building again. We grind, level and moisture-test as a priced line item, every time, and we would rather lose a job on that line than come back to it.

Yes. Phased resin flooring in a working warehouse is a sequencing problem — bay by bay, with racking decanted, containment up, and each bay returned to use as it cures. Roughly half of what we have delivered has been executed in premises that stayed open, including occupied government hospital departments, which is a harder version of the same discipline.