The Dubai Municipality’s "Zero Accident Construction" challenge initiative, announced in August, has received tremendous response from the contracting companies operating in the emirate of Dubai since the opening of registrations, with many companies submitting applications in September.

The challenge, which will continue for six months from 1st October, 2018, to 31st March, 2019, is expected to enhance the prestige of Dubai as one of the cities in which the construction sector is active and plays an important role as an essential component of the economic development system.

"The municipality is always keen to launch pioneering initiatives in various areas of its work, including construction," said Dawood Al Hajiri, Director-General of Dubai Municipality.

"We believe in the importance of raising the level of construction safety in the construction sites in the emirate and providing a safe and stimulating environment for workers on the construction sites because they have an important role in the development process that is taking place in the Emirate," he said.

Al Hajiri added, "In all its practices, the municipality is keen to apply the highest international standards to provide maximum security, safety and public health standards to build a happy and sustainable city. We always work with our contractors as a team to promote the concept of positive safety, in addition to encouraging them to take preventive and precautionary measures to protect workers and secure construction sites. We also instruct companies to use training methodologies and educate workers according to the nature of their work and the needs of the construction projects."

Eng. Abdullah Al Shezawi, Director of the Building Control Department said the idea of the initiative is to create a challenge for the contracting companies to compete with each other to achieve the largest number of working hours on the construction sites without causing accidents or violations of the requirements of security and safety and also protecting life and property according to innovative standards and mechanisms of work and by applying the provisions contained in the Dubai Municipality Building Safety Practice Manual.

"The participating contractors should intensify the auditing operations, train their manpower and use the latest technologies and equipment to complete working hours without accidents. In return, the municipality will hold a number of activities and programmes associated with introducing the initiative in order to achieve its objectives, in addition to intensifying the visits of Building Control Department teams on all the construction sites in the Emirate to provide guidance and direction to the engineering and technical staff of the contracting companies," he explained.

"The winning companies will be honoured on World Labour Day, which falls on 1st May, 2019, and a number of incentives and privileges will be offered to them in recognition of their efforts and cooperation. These include the registration of additional points in the engineering excellence initiative in the contracting companies’ category, allowing the execution of one project higher than the contractor's grade (three floors higher) and the renewal of the commercial licence for a period of two consecutive years instead of one year," Al Shezawi said.

"In order to include the largest number of contracting companies, seven categories have been fixed for the challenge based on the number of employees of the company. Multiple communication channels have been set up to respond to inquiries quickly and effectively through the public message system and via e-mail, in addition to the Municipality Toll-Free Number.