The
Engineer.
From the survey benches of the Dubai Land Department to the leadership of one of Dubai’s largest government entities — the quiet, institution-building career of a man who has spent three decades on the machinery of a fast-growing city.
Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita did not arrive at the top of Dubai’s municipal government through politics or spectacle. He arrived through survey benchmarks, land registers and the patient work of building institutions — the sort of career whose results are measured in systems that keep running long after any single tenure ends.
01An engineer’s beginning
He trained as a survey engineer, with a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fresno, and later an MBA from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport in Egypt. He joined the Dubai Land Department in the mid-1990s and, by 1999, had become the first Emirati to head its Survey Section — the unit responsible for the precise measurement on which a city’s land records depend.
02The RERA years
In 2007 he was appointed to lead the newly created Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), the body that writes and enforces the rules of Dubai’s property market. He would hold the role for close to seventeen years — through the market’s most turbulent and formative period — shaping the frameworks for investor protection, escrow controls and transparency that underpin the emirate’s real-estate sector today.
It was also the platform from which he pushed the sector toward technology and long-range planning: the Dubai Real Estate Sector Strategy 2033, the 6005AQARI remote-services platform, and a first-in-region programme to register property title deeds on blockchain.
“The Home First initiative reinforces Dubai Municipality’s commitment to a flexible and sustainable urban planning framework.”— Marwan Bin Ghalita, on housing reform, 2025
03Land, then the municipality
In July 2024, by Decree No. (44) of 2024, he was appointed Director-General of the Dubai Land Department. Months later he was additionally assigned Dubai Municipality in an acting capacity, and in May 2025 that appointment was confirmed on a permanent basis — moving him from writing the rules of a market to running the everyday systems of the city itself.
As Director-General of Dubai Municipality he leads its infrastructure, housing, planning, inspection and public realm. His agenda there has been one of delivery: the Home First housing reforms, a modern City Inspector service, the AI-and-drone Smart Municipality Eye, and the large stormwater programmes — Tasreef and the Deira network — that harden a growing city against extreme weather, alongside new public beaches along the coast.
04Public and sporting life
His public service has extended beyond the civil administration. He was elected President of the UAE Football Association in 2016, serving through the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, and earlier chaired the Al Nasr Cultural & Sport Club. In the legislature he was re-elected to the Federal National Council in 2015 and served as its First Deputy Speaker — bringing the same institution-minded temperament to each role he has held.
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