Due to the scarcity of water and the harsh desert climate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), water and energy are two of the main challenges for the design of sustainable buildings in the UAE. Relevant literature calls for the consideration of building systems and materials at the design stage to achieve high-performing buildings and to save on the operational costs of the building. The aim of this research was to design a high-performance building that meets the environmental sustainability requirements for water and energy, in the city of Dubai to reflect the technological advancements of the UAE Mars mission. This has been achieved through following an integrated design process, which was mainly focused on the evaluation and specification of the building engineering systems based on performance, besides the goal of achieving visually appealing building with advanced structural design. The performance verification of the final building design, which considered engineering systems design from conception and through the design and detailed design stages, revealed a 15% reduction in water consumption and a 60% reduction in energy consumption. This provides a valuable contribution to architectural engineering practice, by demonstrating a case study for enhancing energy and water efficiency via building design, which consequently contributes to the environmental sustainability of the built environment.

The construction industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is faced with negative project performance, including low productivity, higher costs, delays in project completion, and defects during construction. One of the main reasons for these issues is the engagement of unskilled craft workers. Despite these labor issues, demand for construction projects in the UAE has been explosively increasing, in part due to Dubai winning the hosting of Expo 2020, which has given rise to an unprecedented demand for skilled construction craft workers. This study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of construction project managers regarding the reasons and challenges associated with the hiring of skilled craft workers in the construction labor market of the UAE. To fulfill the study purpose, the authors conducted structured open-ended interviews with UAE construction project managers. The results revealed several reasons for hiring craft workers despite a clear lack of qualifications and suggest some potential solutions.

The UAE is witnessing increased interest for sustainable development which poses challenges on the development processes for the large amount of built environment projects taking place in this emerging economy. While, great attention has been given to the development of tools and methods to measure and assess the performance of buildings to meet specific environmental sustainability targets, however, less is known about the effect of these assessment methods on the built environment development process itself. This paper addresses this gap through the investigation of the adoption of building environmental sustainability assessment methods for development projects in the UAE. Currently, there are two assessment methods in the UAE; Pearl Building Rating (PBR) and Al Sa’fat systems. Background study revealed that both systems: are developed in parallel to the development of building codes, adopt performance-based approach for assessment methods, and their adoption for development projects is basically mandatory. This paper draws from diffusion of innovations theory and growing literature in the adoption of similar assessment methods in projects, with the objective of proposing a conceptual framework that conceptualizes PBR and Al Sa’fat methods as innovations and the development projects as the social system for adoption, while focusing on the adoption process dynamics rather than the decision to adopt or not. The proposed framework captures specific conceptual themes, providing the foundation for further empirical investigation. As such, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the adoption of global energy assessment tools and specifically addresses the UAE’s sustainable development policy and regulation.