The International Code Council’s Middle East and North Africa office will host a series of discussions in Dubai this September, focusing on converting construction innovation into practical, large-scale applications. The event will center on modular and off-site construction, which continue to face obstacles despite their demonstrated advantages.
Challenges preventing wider adoption
The Construction Technology ConFex 2026 conference, scheduled for September 9–10, features a panel called Beyond Pilots: Scaling Modular and Off-Site Construction. This session examines why modular and off-site construction—despite offering clear efficiency improvements, remains confined to isolated projects rather than becoming an industry standard.
A major obstacle lies in how value is evaluated. Current assessments prioritize initial costs, often making modular approaches seem less economical than conventional methods. The panel advocates for a broader perspective, emphasizing total cost of ownership to account for long-term savings in labor, materials, and project timelines. Adopting this framework could justify upfront expenses and encourage faster industry-wide adoption.
Attendees include Mohamed Amer, ICC MENA’s Managing Director, alongside representatives from Modon Real Estate, ECC, and Mott MacDonald. The discussion will address commercial, technical, and project-specific barriers, including financing strategies, regulatory inconsistencies, and supply chain limitations.
This is not the first time modular and off-site construction has encountered scaling difficulties. What sets the current effort apart is the region’s strong commitment to digitalization, which may provide the necessary infrastructure to transition from pilot projects to widespread adoption.
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Industry-wide coordination required
Later in September, on the 30th, at the Construction Week Leaders in Construction Conference, Amer will participate in another panel titled The Innovation Bottleneck. This session explores why promising advancements, such as modular and off-site construction, often remain stuck in experimental phases.
The issue extends beyond technical limitations. Successful implementation requires cooperation among contractors, developers, regulators, and financial institutions. For instance, modular and off-site construction requires standardized design codes, but these vary significantly across Gulf markets. Without uniform regulations, suppliers and builders face increased risks and coordination challenges.
The panel will also examine practical execution. Even when innovations are proven, integrating them into real-world projects demands clear frameworks, including workforce training, updated procurement methods, and revised contract terms. Without these, pilot initiatives risk failing to scale.
Amer emphasized that the industry lacks not ideas, but the systems to support them. “The construction industry has no shortage of innovative ideas, technologies, and solutions. The bigger challenge is creating the conditions that allow those innovations to move beyond individual pilots and become part of how projects are delivered at scale.” The discussions will focus on identifying these conditions, whether through policy reforms, financial incentives, or collaborative industry efforts.
Both events highlight a regional shift toward prioritizing scalability over experimentation. Through its participation in both forums, ICC MENA will contribute to the wider industry dialogue around creating a construction sector that is not only innovative, but also equipped to implement and scale new approaches effectively across the region.
