Office Moves Into ICD Brookfield Place: The DIFC Tenant Playbook

The freight elevator at ICD Brookfield Place runs a single-trip cycle of 11 minutes lobby-to-floor and back, on a non-negotiable schedule. We learned this the hard way on our first office move into the building, when the fit-out contractor next door overran their slot by 90 minutes and our 47-desk relocation queued in the basement until 11pm.

That's the kind of detail nobody mentions when you sign the lease. Foster + Partners did beautiful work on the tower — biophilic atrium, LEED Platinum, the Summer Garden — but those design awards don't help you on move-in day. What helps is knowing where loading dock 7 sits, how long the access-control turnstile is, and which freight elevator opens straight onto the tenant fit-out floors.

We've moved nine offices into ICD Brookfield Place in the past 18 months — three full-floor financial services tenants, two professional services firms, and four smaller wealth-management offices. Here's the operations playbook we run.

The building basics, mover's-eye view

ICD Brookfield Place is a 53-storey commercial office tower in the heart of DIFC, developed by Investment Corporation of Dubai and Brookfield Property Partners. Around 83,600 square metres of net leasable office space sits above seven basement levels and a five-storey retail podium. The whole compound shares one secured loading area in basement level 2 — that's where your move starts.

The tower is fully fitted on most lower-half floors, shell-and-core on most upper-half floors. Whether you're moving into a fitted suite or a shell-and-core space changes the entire move sequence:

• Fitted suites (typically L4–L25): You're moving people, IT, and a few signature furniture pieces. Total weight is light, freight elevator pressure is low, you can usually finish in 6–10 hours.
• Shell-and-core (typically L26–L52): You're moving in raised floor systems, full IT racks, partition walls, custom joinery, then people on top. Plan for a 10–14 day phased move with the fit-out contractor running point.

Loading dock 7, the freight elevator, and the security clearance you didn't budget for

This is where every move into the tower lives or dies. The building permits commercial moving traffic only through Loading Dock 7, accessed off Al Mustaqbal Street through the security checkpoint at basement level 2. Two things to know up front:

Truck size limits

The dock height limits the building to 4.2m clearance trucks. We've had clients book 6m luton vans because that's what the moving company quoted them, only to find out at the gate they have to break down the load and shuttle it in via a smaller vehicle. ICD Brookfield doesn't make exceptions. Specify a 4.2m van or smaller in your quote.

Security clearance for crews

Every member of the moving crew needs an Emirates ID copy and trade licence submitted to the ICD Brookfield tenant relations team at least four working days before the move. We've seen tenants try to book a Saturday move on a Wednesday call — it doesn't happen. Crew members who haven't been pre-cleared get turned away at the gate, full stop.

If you're using one of our office crews, we handle the paperwork as part of the booking — we keep three of our regular movers permanently pre-cleared for the building because we work it so often. If you're using a different mover, ask them upfront whether they've worked the building before. The four-day clearance window catches a lot of first-timers.

Freight elevator booking — the actual constraint

One freight elevator services the whole tower. It sits in the service core opposite the main lobby and stops at every floor from B7 to L52. The booking system runs in 90-minute slots, weekdays 8pm–6am only — meaning no daytime moves. Saturdays and Sundays you can book daytime slots from 9am to 5pm.

What this means for your move plan:

• A typical 50-desk office move needs roughly 3–4 freight elevator slots end to end — 6 hours of elevator time. You're booking across two evenings minimum, often three.
• Slots release 21 days in advance and the popular weekend daytime windows are gone within 24 hours of release. Book the day they open.
• The single-trip cycle (lobby loaded → drop on floor → return to lobby empty) is 11 minutes. Two cycles is roughly one pallet of furniture and a stack of monitor boxes. Plan crew shifts around that throughput, not your wishful thinking.

What the lobby turnstile actually accepts

The main entrance turnstiles are 900mm wide. The cargo bypass gate next to the security desk is 1,200mm wide. Anything bigger than 1,200mm — boardroom tables, executive credenzas, oversized partition panels — has to come up the freight elevator pre-assembled. We've seen tenants pay for custom joinery to be built off-site only to find out the finished piece doesn't fit through the dock-to-elevator route.

The freight elevator car is 2.4m × 1.6m × 2.7m high. Anything that doesn't fit in those dimensions has to be flat-packed and assembled on the floor.

Realistic cost range for a move into ICD Brookfield

Based on our last 12 months of pricing into the building:

• 20–30 desk fitted-suite move (within Dubai): AED 8,500 – AED 14,000 including IT disconnect/reconnect, server cabinet relocation, access fees, after-hours premium.
• 50–80 desk fitted-suite move: AED 18,000 – AED 32,000.
• Full-floor move (120+ desks): AED 45,000 – AED 75,000, usually phased over 3–4 evenings.
• Shell-and-core fit-out + move (120+ desks): AED 90,000 – AED 180,000+ depending on the joinery specification, run alongside the fit-out contractor's schedule.

What pushes you to the high end: weekday-only availability (premium ~25% over weekend rate), tight insurance requirements (the building requests AED 5M public liability minimum), and bespoke crating for ergonomic chairs and IT cabinets that most tenants don't budget for.

The fit-out coordinator approval workflow

Tenant relations runs a fit-out coordinator whose sign-off you need before any move involving construction or partition changes. The submission stack typically includes a method statement, a risk assessment, public liability insurance certificate, and the move plan with elevator slot bookings attached. Approval takes 5–7 working days.

For a pure people-and-desks move into a fitted suite, the coordinator's involvement is lighter — the building treats it as an operational move rather than fit-out work — but the security clearance is still mandatory.

If you're putting an RFP together to choose a moving company, we cover what to ask for in our office mover RFP checklist. ICD Brookfield is the kind of building where you want a vendor that has worked it before — the constraint stack catches first-timers.

What's different from other DIFC towers we move into

For comparison: Gate Building, Index Tower, and Emirates Financial Towers each have their own constraints, but most allow daytime moves with a window into the building. Park Towers permits some daytime move slots with restrictions. ICD Brookfield is the strictest in DIFC for the after-hours-only rule, mostly because the building deliberately positions itself as a premium occupier experience and noise/dust control during business hours is non-negotiable.

If you're choosing between DIFC towers, our DIFC shell-and-core guide covers the broader fit-out picture across the cluster. And our general DIFC office move guide covers the pre-move regulatory side (DIFC licence amendment, RERA Ejari for office leases, registered address change with the DIFC Authority).

Insurance and indemnity

ICD Brookfield's tenant handbook requires a minimum AED 5,000,000 public liability cover from the moving contractor, plus a workers' compensation policy and a contractor all-risk policy on the value of the goods being moved. Our standard policy stack covers all three for office moves into the tower as a default — if you're sourcing a different mover, confirm their cover meets the building's threshold before signing.

Booking the move from a corporate relocation timeline

For a 50-desk move into the building, the realistic prep window is 6–8 weeks: 1 week for security paperwork, 3 weeks lead time on the freight elevator slots, 1 week on the fit-out coordinator approval, and 1–2 weeks of on-site coordination with IT and the new fit-out for racking and cabling. If you're inside that window — talk to us early. Our office moves team can pull together the full submission stack and book the elevator slots for you in one go.

Larger moves often sit alongside an executive relocation programme with senior staff coming in from overseas. If that's your scenario, our corporate relocation package guide covers the personal-side moves that usually run alongside the office one.

Ready to start? Send us the floor plan and we'll come back with a phased plan, elevator slot recommendation, and a fixed quote.