The shock fire at the Address Downtown Hotel on New Years'
Eve just over a year ago put the issue of the UAE's fire safety
firmly on the world stage. This was, however, just one in a spate
of high-rise fires. A new UAE Fire and Life Safety Code (the New
Code) had already been on the cards and was finally launched by
Dubai Civil Defence officials at the Intersec Fire Safety
Conference on 22 January 2017.
Construction in the UAE
A construction boom followed the UAE's discovery of oil in
the late 1970s, and until the issuance of the 2012 UAE Fire and
Life Safety Code (the 2012 Code) the industry was
subject to light-touch regulation.
As a result, and owing to the attractively low cost of aluminium
composite panels (ACP), high rise buildings in the
UAE were typically built with facades of ACP cladding sandwiching a
highly-combustible core. Studies have found that more than 65
percent of the high rise buildings in the UAE were built with
external panels containing
