Construction Business Review

United Design International
A Legacy built on Excellence and Quality

Mohammed Al Mansoori, General Manager, United Design InternationalMohammed Al Mansoori, General Manager
The UAE is home to some of the world’s most extraordinary landscapes and cities. A commonality across its breathtaking historical and religious sites, exquisite palaces, and elegant government buildings is the opulent interiors that reflect the country’s heritage and culture.

At the forefront of enhancing this sumptuous architecture with its superior quality, luxurious, and value-engineered interiors is United Design International (UDI). A well-established interior design and build company in Abu Dhabi, UDI is a subsidiary of Das Holding, one of the UAE’s largest and most dynamic investment holding companies. This enables UDI to tap into its parent company’s unrivaled resources and provide cost-effective solutions to its clients.

UDI partners with a wide range of entities, including government businesses, hospitality, educational, commercial spaces, offices, and religious buildings. It works on palaces, high-end VVIP clientele, and residences and always emphasizes renovating the interiors while maintaining a sustainable design approach.

“We deal with a broad spectrum of projects, from complex ones to individual residences, with the same degree of enthusiasm and commitment by leveraging two decades of experience and expertise in interior design and construction,” says Mohammed Al Mansoori, general manager, UDI.

Meeting all client requirements across different construction phases, including interior concept, spatial design, tendering value engineering, supervision, and project management, UDI is a one-stop shop that adds value at each project lifecycle stage. For every client engagement, it places significant emphasis on the concept stage, following its core tenet; once a client’s needs are understood, they can be easily translated into a design.

UDI adopts a collaborative approach to design, sourcing ideas from team members that bring their broad and multi-faceted expertise to deliver value from different angles.

At the heart of UDI’s success is its expert team of professionals from all age groups, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds. Diversity, equality, and inclusion are critical components of UDI’s approach to design, and this is mirrored in its employment process. It is a melting pot of experts from various fields, including FF&E specialists, quality assurance, and project management estimation. This has many advantages for customers since it allows them to provide new viewpoints to the whiteboard during the interaction.

Simultaneously, UDI invests in technology like Blender, a 3D creation suite, and Unreal Engine, a 3D computer graphics game engine, to give clients a whole new approach to evaluating their design. The staff receives ongoing training on these solutions to ensure the delivery of desired competencies.

UDI ensures clients understand what to anticipate through its client-interactive seminars, 3D modeling sessions, and VR. It also highlights the need for design sustainability by examining the CAPEX and OPEX points of view to offer the best possible designs that achieve desired outcomes within their timeline and budget.

We deal with a broad spectrum of projects, from complex ones to individual residences, with the same degree of enthusiasm and commitment by leveraging two decades of experience and expertise in interior design and construction

UDI regularly collaborates with its suppliers and contractors to improve the procurement process. It engages them during the schematic stage and proactively performs value-engineering to save their time and money instead of putting the project out to bid only to find they are over budget. Above all, UDI supports the project management and execution phases beyond the design stage to ensure its additions to a construction project stand the test of time.

The Sheik Khalifa Mosque, one of the biggest mosques in Abu Dhabi, is a significant project of UDI under the patronage of the president of the UAE. UDI got the contract after winning a design contest and ventured into the project after detailed research on Islamic architecture. The interiors of the Mosque reflect UDI’s expertise and capabilities in design. For the interior artwork, it sourced artisans from around the world, and every design pattern was created with traditional Emirati elements. From magnificent chandeliers to large hand-tufted carpets, UDI successfully provides worshippers with a one-of-a-kind experience.

UDI has carved a prominent position in the construction landscape through its robust designs and project management strategies. Moving forward, UDI aims to continue working toward raising the caliber of its output to exceed client expectations and deliver genuinely creative solutions of unmatched quality.