Advisory · The advisory and building-science practice of Saniservice
Beyond a test. A managed program.
A single measurement tells you what a building was doing on one afternoon. Advisory is the engagement for clients who need to know why, what to do about it, and whether it worked. We establish the baseline, prescribe the intervention, supervise the work, verify the outcome and keep measuring after everyone else has left.
No phase begins until the previous one is signed off.Investigate · Prescribe · Verify
What Advisory is
One practice, accountable from first reading to final verification.
Most indoor-environment work in this market is sold as a test or sold as a service. The test produces a number and stops. The service produces an invoice and stops. Neither is accountable for the condition of the building six months later.
Advisory closes that gap. Indoor Sciences takes responsibility for the whole arc of an indoor-environment problem: the investigation that establishes the cause, the prescription that defines the corrective scope, the oversight of whoever executes it, the measurement that confirms the result, and the monitoring that confirms it holds. The same scientists who took the first reading sign the last one.
Indoor Sciences investigates and prescribes. Saniservice executes. The laboratory verifies both.
The demarcation is deliberate and stated on every engagement. When our own team does the work, the verification is still ours: the same methods, the same acceptance criteria, reported separately from the works and signed by the scientist who set them. When a third party is the contractor, we vet them, brief them and hold them to the same specification.
Who it is for
For buildings where the stakes are higher than a single room.
Homeowners and residents
When the problem keeps coming back.
A family house, an apartment, or a large villa with basements, an indoor pool and extensive ductwork. The scale of the home is not the test; the persistence of the problem is. Where mold, humidity or symptoms return after cleaning, the cause was never established. Advisory establishes it.
Facility and property managers
When indoor air is a duty of care.
Hotels, schools, clinics, offices and residential portfolios where indoor air is an operational liability, a duty of care and, increasingly, a regulatory expectation. Advisory gives management a documented baseline, a defensible standard and a monitoring record.
Architects, developers and contractors
When it is still a drawing.
Pre-handover verification, post-fit-out commissioning, and design-stage review of the envelope that will determine a building's moisture behavior for decades, and the mechanical systems that will govern its pressure behavior from day one. It is far cheaper to correct a detail on a drawing than on a wall.
The five phases
Every engagement runs the same sequence. That is the point.
A method that changes from client to client is not a method. Advisory runs five phases, in order, with a defined deliverable at the end of each. No phase begins until the previous one has been signed off.
i.
Baseline investigation
We measure the building as it is before anything is touched. Depending on the brief: indoor air quality profiling (particulates, CO₂, TVOC, formaldehyde, temperature and humidity); microbial air sampling, cultured and read in the Saniservice Department of Microbiology against the Dubai Municipality guideline of 500 CFU/m³; the Moldiness Profile, a surface-by-surface culture of settled dust in which each species is identified under the microscope and reported with its viable count and water-damage indicators, location by location; surface swab sampling where growth is visible or suspected; ERMI mold-DNA profiling (qPCR, 36 indicator species) only where it is specifically required, reported as a relative index alongside culture, never in place of it; moisture and pressure mapping room by room; airflow mapping; HVAC and duct diagnostics; infrared thermographic screening of the envelope and services; water sampling from tank to tap, analyzed by an EIAC-accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) partner laboratory; assessment against the published criteria of the WELL Building Standard v2 (Air, Water and Thermal Comfort concepts) as field evidence for a project's WELL submission.
The practice identifies mold by culture, not by DNA alone. DNA counts every spore in a sample, living or long dead; culture grows what is alive, and living mold is what colonizes, spreads and must be removed. Sampled surface by surface, the result is a map of where the growth is concentrated and where it is not, rather than a single number for the whole building. Culture has limits of its own, and the report states them: dead spores do not appear on a plate, fast-growing genera can mask slower ones, and a sample is a moment. That is why no laboratory result is read on its own; the moisture investigation decides whether it is history or an active problem.
Deliverable the Baseline Report: findings, evidence, and the causal chain from measurement to mechanism.
ii.
Findings and prescription
The baseline is interpreted, not just reported. We name the cause, rank the findings by severity, and write the corrective scope as a specification that can be priced and held to: what is to be done, to what standard, in what order, and how success will be measured.
Deliverable the Prescription: scope of work, acceptance criteria, and the verification plan agreed before work begins.
iii.
Supervised execution
The prescription is executed by the Saniservice mold remediation team. Indoor Sciences supervises either way: site inspections at defined hold points, containment and method checks, and the authority, where you grant it, to stop work that departs from the specification. Contractors are briefed on the standard and on how they will be measured against it.
Deliverable the Supervision Log: hold-point inspections, deviations, and their resolution.
iv.
Post-intervention verification
The building is measured again, by the same methods and read in the same laboratory, against the acceptance criteria written in Phase 02. Where a clearance result must carry formal accreditation, the samples are analyzed by the practice's EIAC-accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) partner laboratory and the report says so. Clearance is granted on evidence, not on completion of the contract. Where the criteria are not met, the work is not finished.
Deliverable the Verification Report: before and after, side by side, with clearance status.
v.
Monitoring
Conditions that were corrected can return: seasons change, systems drift, occupancy changes. Monitoring keeps the building under measurement at an agreed interval so that drift is detected as a trend, long before it is detected as a symptom.
Deliverable the Monitoring Record: periodic readings against the verified baseline, with alerts on deviation.
You cannot hold a standard you do not measure.
Standards and methods
Measured against published standards, not against opinion.
Every threshold Indoor Sciences reports against is named, referenced and dated in the report. Where a local guideline exists we cite it; where it does not, we cite the international standard we apply and say so. Interpretation criteria that are the practice's own are labeled as such.
Dubai Municipality
TG 142, Technical Guideline for Mold Remediation and Control DM-HSD-GU142-MRC2 v1 · 12 May 2025 TG 119, Technical Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality for Healthy Life DM-HSD-GU119-IAQ v4 · 11 Dec 2024 · source of the 500 CFU/m³ total fungal and bacterial guideline TG 141, Environmental Indoor Air Quality Index, EIAQI DM-HSD-GU141-IAQI2 v1 · 14 Feb 2025
ASHRAE
Standard 55-2023, Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy Standard 62.1-2025, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality Standard 62.2-2025, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings
NADCA
ACR, The NADCA Standard 2025, Assessment, Cleaning and Restoration of HVAC Systems · applied to duct diagnostics and HVAC hygiene works
IAC2
Mold Inspection Standards of Practice · the inspection and sampling procedure applied in Phases 01 and 04
ASTM International
D7338, Standard Guide for Assessment of Fungal Growth in Buildings
IICRC
ANSI/IICRC S520-2024, Standard for Professional Mold Remediation · the execution reference in Phase 03; its condition definitions are used at Phase 04 clearance and for surface-sample interpretation
IWBI
WELL Building Standard v2 · Air, Water and Thermal Comfort concepts, as the criteria for field assessment supporting a project's WELL submission
Certification
The practice's inspectors are IAC2 Mold Certified (International Association of Certified Indoor Air Consultants), verifiable by certificate number in the IAC2 public register.
Laboratory
Microbiological samples are analyzed in the Saniservice Department of Microbiology, under the practice's own microbiologists.
The Saniservice Department of Microbiology is a working laboratory, not a certifying body. It is run in-house by our microbiologists to recognized methods and documented protocols, and is used to diagnose, to guide the work and to verify results in context. It is not accredited to ISO 17025. Where a result must carry formal or legal certification, an EIAC-accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) partner laboratory is used, and the report says so.
Measuring instruments used in Indoor Sciences assessments are maintained under Saniservice's ISO 9001 management system. Each instrument is individually identified, with its calibration or verification schedule, history and certificates recorded and reviewed. Instruments are calibrated or verified at manufacturer-recommended intervals, in-house by the laboratory and engineering functions or by external calibration providers where required. Calibration and verification records for the instruments used in a specific assessment are available to clients on request.
What you receive
A report written to be acted on, and to be held to.
Every phase closes with a document in the Indoor Sciences report format. It is written so that an owner can read the first page and decide, a facilities manager can hand it to a contractor as a specification, and an engineer or auditor can trace every number in the appendix back to its instrument. Standards are cited by document and version. Assumptions are labeled as assumptions. The report is signed by the scientist who is accountable for it.
Every observation located, graded by severity, and cross-referenced to its evidence
From measurement to mechanism: why the building is doing what it is doing
What is to be done, to what standard, in what order, with acceptance criteria
Measured again against those criteria, before and after side by side
Location-by-location results: species identified, viable counts, water-damage indicators and the tier of laboratory that produced each result
Instrument output and specimen references
Relationship to Diagnostics
A test is complete in itself. It is also the first page of something larger.
Diagnostics
One question, one precise answer.
Not every building needs a program. Diagnostics offers each investigation as a standalone service with its own report: air, surface, moisture or thermal, measured against a named benchmark and reported plainly.
Where the findings warrant it, a diagnostic becomes Phase 01 of an Advisory engagement, with nothing repeated and nothing re-measured. The report you already hold is the first document in the sequence.
An inspection answers one question on one day: is mold present, and where. Advisory answers the questions that follow: why it is there, what must change, whether the change was made correctly, and whether the condition has stayed corrected. It is a program with five phases and a document at the end of each, not a single visit.
Does Indoor Sciences do the remediation work?
Not as Indoor Sciences. The practice investigates, prescribes, supervises and verifies; the remediation itself is carried out by the Saniservice mold remediation team, to ANSI/IICRC S520-2024. The verification uses the same methods and criteria whoever did the work, and is reported separately from it.
How do you identify mold?
By culture, in the Saniservice Department of Microbiology. Settled dust is collected surface by surface with sterile swabs, cultured on prepared media over several days, and each species is identified under the microscope and reported with its viable count. Water-damage indicator species are flagged per location. DNA-based indices such as ERMI count living and dead spores alike and return one number for the whole dwelling; we arrange an ERMI analysis only where it is specifically required, and always alongside culture.
Can I use my own contractor?
For the mold remediation itself, our own team does the work: it is the team we can hold to the scope and the criteria. Where you have appointed your own trades for the rest, a plumber, a civil contractor, a painter, or a contractor of your own for a building under management, Advisory is where we supervise them: we brief them on the prescription and the acceptance criteria, inspect at hold points, and verify the result by the same methods used at baseline.
How long does an engagement take?
The baseline investigation typically takes six working days from site visit to report; where culture or ERMI analysis is included, incubation and analysis time set the minimum. The full program depends on the corrective scope; monitoring continues at an agreed interval after clearance.
Which buildings does Advisory suit?
Complex residences, hotels, schools, clinics, offices, residential portfolios, and new buildings at pre-handover or post-fit-out. If a single room with a single, obvious cause is the concern, Diagnostics is usually the right entry point.
We are remodeling with an interior designer. When should you be involved?
Twice. First on the drawings, before anything is ordered. Then on site, once the property is stripped back and every wall, floor and ceiling is open: we inspect while there is access to all the surfaces and confirm there is no source of moisture before anything is closed up. A remodel is the one moment when the whole structure can be read directly; after it, the finishes hide it again.
Do you offer assessment packages for commercial buildings?
Not fixed ones. A commercial building gets a baseline investigation scoped to it: the air, the moisture, the surfaces and the air-conditioning, where each is needed, floor by floor, with the acceptance criteria written before any work is priced, and monitoring after. The proposal states what is included and the fee before any visit is booked.
Do you advise on new construction or a fit-out?
Yes, and early is cheaper: on the drawings, before finishes are chosen, where the cold surfaces and the air paths will be; then at hold points on site, when walls and ceilings are open; then a baseline once the building is handed over.
