A city on fire: CIBSE MENA Awards return to Dubai this October

The CIBSE MENA Awards will be presented on 29 October at the W Hotel, Palm Jumeirah, in Dubai, with entries open until 10 July.  In a climate where functioning infrastructure is a matter of survival rather than comfort, the convention offers to engineers who make these buildings work a chance to showcase innovation to the developers, investors, and occupiers who depend on them.

The Middle East and North Africa is in the middle of one of the most ambitious building booms in the world, with giga-projects, smart cities, and a regional push towards net zero reshaping skylines from Riyadh to Dubai to Cairo. The engineering challenge that goes into each project happens invisibly more often than not. Recognising the innovations behind them now represents one of the most valuable ways the industry could raise its standard quickly enough to keep pace with growth in MENA and beyond.

The harshest environments on earth

The numbers behind the region's building challenge are unforgiving, with recent years seeing temperatures breaching the 50 degree mark. Air conditioning accounts for up to 70% of household electricity use across the Gulf, with cooling demands projected to triple by 2030.

Water follows the same pattern, with around 42% of the UAE's drinkable supply produced by desalination, 70% in Saudi Arabia, 86% in Oman and 90% in Kuwait, and even efficient reverse-osmosis plants consume roughly 2.5 to 3 kWh for every cubic metre produced. The cost is immense in a region that already uses around 560 litres of water per person each day against a global average of 180.

Against those constraints, the mechanical, electrical and public health engineering inside a building determines whether a development performs to an expected, sustainable standard once it is occupied. The systems doing the heaviest work remain out of sight and largely uncredited.

Giving the invisible work a stage

The CIBSE MENA Awards were created to make that hidden work visible and, in doing so, useful to the wider industry. Formerly the CIBSE UAE Annual Awards, they were relaunched this year under a broader MENA banner, reflecting CIBSE's expanding membership and activity across the region. In 2025 the programme ran to more than two dozen categories, and it has expanded again this year.

Annually, entrants submit detailed case studies setting out how they approached a problem, which trade-offs they accepted, and how the building behaved once it was running. A panel of judges assesses those entries, and the strongest are published and recognised, becoming a shared record of practice that anyone in the region can learn from.

Last year's entrants included a net-zero-energy mosque at Masdar City delivered by Arup, a WSP-reworked HSBC branch in Jumeirah, and the legacy phase of the Dubai Exhibition Centre campus completed by Egis, adapting Expo infrastructure for use beyond the event it was built for.

This year, the panel is chaired by Julie Godefroy, CIBSE's Head of Net Zero, and includes senior figures from the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, the Department of Energy Abu Dhabi, Expo City, KAFD and Heriot-Watt University Dubai, drawn from the region's energy, policy and academic institutions.

An invitation to the industry

The 2026 awards recognise excellence across the full spectrum of the discipline, from sustainable design and decarbonisation strategy through to digital innovation, project delivery, and the individuals and teams driving change within their organisations. Entries are grouped into Projects, People, Companies, and Innovations and Products, with new categories this year in areas including vertical transportation, embodied carbon, and women's leadership in the profession. The full list of categories, and the entry portal, are on the CIBSE MENA Awards page.

The awards are for all those who are working on a project, leading a team, or driving an initiative in the region that deserves recognition, with the strongest entries consistently demonstrating the evidence and detail that grant the panel a full understanding of the impact.

The built environment in this region will continue to evolve rapidly over the coming decade, and the engineers and organisations setting the benchmark today are defining what a high-performing building in a hot, water-scarce and rapidly urbanising region should look like. These awards exist to ensure that work is seen.

Entries remain open until 10 July 2026, ahead of the ceremony on 29 October at the W Hotel, Palm Jumeirah, in Dubai. Find out more and register your entry on the CIBSE MENA Awards page.

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