About · British-founded, working in Dubai
We have spent twenty years on the other side of the handover
Our founders built and delivered new homes before they started inspecting them. Kensington Inspection Co applies that experience, and the standards British homes are built to, to property handover in Dubai.
Why we started it
The same conversation, over and over
An owner takes delivery of a new apartment. Something is visibly wrong. Nobody in the room can say whether it is a defect or simply how the building was made, so the conversation goes nowhere and the owner signs anyway.
We had watched that happen from the other side for years, on developments where we were the ones handing the keys over. The difference between a defect being fixed and a defect being absorbed by the buyer was almost never the severity of the defect. It was whether anyone had written it down properly.
So the practice was built around one habit. Every item we raise is measured, and every measurement is set against a published tolerance that we name in the report. The developer can check our working. That is the whole method, and it is why our reports get acted on.
Our founders
We built the things we now inspect
Kensington Inspection Co was founded by two British construction professionals with more than twenty years between them in residential building, new-build handover and villa construction, working for and alongside developers.
That is a deliberately unglamorous background, and it is the point. We know how a wall gets finished on a Thursday afternoon when the handover is Sunday. We know which trades come back and which do not. We know what a site team will accept as a defect and what they will argue about, because we have been the site team.
Every inspector we employ is trained on our own method and works alongside a founder before they attend a property alone.
20 yrs
of combined UK and Gulf experience in residential construction, handover and project management
2,840
properties inspected in Dubai since 2019, villas and apartments
412
checkpoints on every inspection, worked through in the same order every time
±3mm
the kind of tolerance a defect is measured against, cited by name in the report
The standards we work to
Inspected to the standards British homes are built to
Dubai has no single published handover standard for residential finishes. Britain does. Our founders snagged British new-build to NHBC tolerances, where every home is measured before it is signed off, and we brought that expectation here. Those standards were written for exactly this argument: what a housebuilder must put right, and what a buyer must accept.
Where a tolerance exists, we measure against it and name it. Where none exists, we say so plainly rather than dress a judgement up as a fact. It is a slower way to write a report and a much harder one to dismiss.
Measured, not eyeballed
Levels, moisture, thermal, gradient. Instruments come out on every inspection, not only when something looks obviously wrong.
Graded by consequence
Critical, major, minor. You should be able to see in one pass what must be closed before you sign and what can follow.
Reviewed before it is issued
No report leaves this office without a second pair of eyes over the measurements and the grading.
Written to be handed over
Located, photographed, measured, referenced. A contractor can work straight from it without ringing us for clarification.
Where we sit in the market
We are more expensive, but we explain exactly why
An inspection advertised at a few hundred dirhams is not the same work done for less money. It is less work. The difference is worth setting out honestly, item by item.
Our undertakings
Four things we will not do
01
Inflate a defect count
A long report is not a good report. Splitting one poorly finished wall into nine entries makes the total look impressive and makes the document useless to the person who has to fix it. We count items the way a contractor would work through them.
02
Take anything from a developer
No referral fees, no commissions, no preferred-inspector arrangements. We are paid by the person who instructs us and by nobody else, which is the only arrangement under which our report is worth reading.
03
Carry out the remedial work
We do not repair what we inspect, and we take nothing from the contractors who do. An inspector who also quotes for the snags has an obvious reason to find them.
04
Call something a defect without a standard
If there is no tolerance to measure against, the entry says so and is recorded as an observation. Overstating one item is the fastest way to lose the developer's attention on the forty that matter.
Licensing
Kensington Inspection Co LLC
DED licence 1094412 · Unit 402, Boulevard Plaza Tower 1, Downtown Dubai · professional indemnity cover in place, certificate on request.
Before the keys change hands
Tell us the property and the date. A fixed fee comes back the same working day.