Opening an office in Dubai puts technology on the critical path in a way that surprises most teams. The circuit has a lead time you cannot compress. Ceilings close on a date fixed by the fit-out contractor. Building management controls when work can happen at all. Miss any of those and the office opens on temporary arrangements that quietly become permanent.
The checklist below is the sequence we work to, whether the client has a local IT department or a head office several time zones away. Use it as a planning document; the detail of each item is settled at survey.
Before the lease is signed
- Confirm which service providers can deliver a business circuit to the building, and the realistic lead time for that address.
- Identify where the provider's hand-off will land and whether a usable comms room position exists near it.
- Check riser access, containment capacity and whether the ceiling is accessible or fixed.
- Establish building management rules: working hours, permits, lift access, contractor registration.
- Ask what the previous tenant left behind — legacy cabling and racks are as often a liability as an asset.
At floor-plan stage
- Fix the comms room position and reserve it. It needs space, power, cooling and access, not the leftover cupboard.
- Agree containment routes with the fit-out contractor before ceilings and partitions are designed out.
- Count what actually needs a cable: desks, meeting rooms, printers, screens, access points, cameras, door controllers, machinery.
- Decide the cable category against run length, wireless density and how long you expect to occupy the space.
- Confirm power provision and UPS requirement for the rack with the MEP team.
- Agree camera positions and door hardware locations while walls and doors can still change.
Twelve to eight weeks out
- Order the internet circuit. This is normally the longest lead item and the most common cause of a late opening.
- Place equipment orders: switches, firewall, access points, rack, cameras, recorders, door controllers, handsets.
- Map every lead time against the fit-out programme and identify what threatens the occupancy date.
- Agree group IT standards with head office if the decision sits outside the UAE — naming, addressing, security policy, remote access.
- Plan telephony: numbering, porting or new numbers, call routing, reception handling.
First fix, before ceilings close
- Install containment and pull horizontal cabling to every agreed position.
- Run fibre backbones to any secondary comms position.
- Cable camera, access point and door controller positions now, not after the ceiling is sealed.
- Build the rack: patch panels, power distribution, cable management, labelling scheme.
Second fix and configuration
- Terminate outlets and panels, then test every permanent link and correct anything that fails.
- Install and configure switching, firewall and remote access.
- Install access points to the survey positions and configure channels, power, segmentation and guest access.
- Install and configure cameras, recorders and storage, and set retention deliberately.
- Install door hardware, readers and controllers; enrol staff, visitor and contractor arrangements.
- Configure telephony and test call flows end to end, including reception and out-of-hours routing.
Validation, two weeks out
- Verify cable test results are complete and issued, with labelling at both ends.
- Validate Wi-Fi coverage by walking the floor, not by looking at a plan.
- Confirm camera images, playback, export and time synchronisation across all devices.
- Test door hardware, fail-safe behaviour and integration with fire requirements as advised by the responsible party.
- Confirm the internet circuit is live and the firewall configuration is proven, not assumed.
- Prove backup, remote access and printing — the three things always discovered missing on day one.
Cutover weekend
- Sequence the move so the new site is proven before the old one is released.
- Relocate equipment, connect users and confirm each department can work before leaving the floor.
- Redirect or port telephony at the agreed moment, with a rollback position.
- Keep the previous site reachable until the new environment is confirmed stable.
- Have engineers on site for the first working morning, not on the end of a phone.
Handover and afterwards
- Collect cable test results, port schedules, rack elevations, configuration records and device lists.
- Walk the documentation through with whoever will own the site day to day.
- Agree support arrangements sized to whether you have local IT staff or none.
- Put the cabling, network and surveillance estate under a maintenance arrangement before the first fault, not after it.
The three items that most often slip
The internet circuit. Ordered too late, almost every time. It should be one of the first commitments made after the lease, not one of the last.
The comms room. Decided last, in whatever space is left, without power or cooling. Reserve it at floor-plan stage and defend it.
Cabling before ceilings close. Once the ceiling is sealed, every subsequent point costs several times what it would have cost a fortnight earlier — and the work has to be done out of hours.