The Practice · The advisory and building-science practice of Saniservice

A practice built on one conviction: understand first.

Indoor Sciences exists because its parent company refused to intervene in any indoor environment it did not understand, and understanding, done properly, is a discipline of its own. It needs architects who read buildings, engineers who read systems, and microbiologists who read what the eye cannot see. So we assembled them under one roof, gave them a laboratory, and called it what it is: a practice. The first of its kind in the UAE and the GCC.

Indoor Sciences investigates and prescribes. Saniservice executes. The laboratory verifies both.

The standard we holdVerifiable

IAC2 Mold Certified inspectorsfirst IAC2-certified mold team in the UAE
ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001certified by Bureau Veritas
Saniservice Department of Microbiologyculture and identification
EIAC-accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) partner laboratorywhere accreditation is required
11,000+ clients since 2009most of whom return

Every finding we publish is signed by a person with verifiable credentials.Licensed · Certified · Accredited

The conviction

You cannot hold a standard you do not measure.

Saniservice was founded in Dubai in 2009 on a single conviction: that excellence was possible in a field where the city had learned to accept mediocrity. Its founder had spent a working life studying how excellence sets itself apart, in five-star hotels, in private banks, in the great houses, and found that the answer was never technical superiority alone. It was consistency: a standard held without interruption, year after year, until it became the thing people trusted. Eighteen years later, more than eleven thousand clients, most of whom return, hold their homes to that standard.

The standard had to be provable. So Saniservice chose Bureau Veritas, deliberately one of the strictest ISO auditors, when easier options existed, and has been audited without interruption since: ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001.

Indoor Sciences is what that conviction became when it turned to diagnosis. A standard cannot be held on a feeling, and it cannot be held on a claim; it has to be measured, by people whose names and credentials can be checked, with instruments that are calibrated, against benchmarks that are published. Where Saniservice made excellence deliverable, Indoor Sciences makes it measurable.

You are not retaining a start-up. You are retaining the science arm of a company that decided, eighteen years ago, to prove its work rather than claim it. Saniservice built its own Department of Microbiology and staffed it with its own microbiologists. It fielded the first IAC2-certified mold team in the UAE. It has held three ISO certifications under Bureau Veritas audit without interruption. More than eleven thousand clients have chosen it since 2009, and most of them return. That is the ground Indoor Sciences stands on.

The practice works in one of the most demanding humidity climates in which buildings are cooled. A method that holds here holds in any hot, humid city. That is its ambition, and Dubai is where it is tested.

Indoor environmental health · Dubai, since 2009

2009The refusal began

11,000+Clients across the Emirates, most of whom return

ThreeISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, certified by Bureau Veritas

FirstIAC2-certified mold team in the UAE

LaboratoryThe Saniservice Department of Microbiology

Why we exist

We put the word science in our name. It obliges us.

Air, moisture, pressure and heat do not know who owns a building, or what it cost. They act on everyone inside it, every hour: the child asleep in a villa, the guest in a suite on the twentieth floor, the resident on the ninth floor of a tower who will never complain. The standard is not set by the building. It is set by the person responsible for it.

Indoor Sciences studies how buildings behave in hot, humid climates. Mold is where that behavior becomes visible, and where most of our work begins. A practice that can explain and clear mold reliably in this city has had to master everything beneath it: the physics of moist air, the building's outer shell, the mechanical system, the pressure regime, the microbiology of the surfaces. We did not choose mold as a specialism. The climate chose it for us, and it has made us the practice we are.

No interior is a collection of rooms. It is a living system: air, moisture, pressure and heat moving through its skin and its circulation. Every recurring symptom has a causal chain, and a disciplined investigation follows that chain until the contributing conditions are understood.

Evidence is established before a prescription is written. Verification follows the work. Between the two are calibrated field instruments, documented laboratory methods and named specialists whose signatures appear on the report.

From the founder

I have spent my life fascinated by the difference between excellence and mediocrity: in a five-star hotel, a private bank, a great house. I built Saniservice to prove that excellence was possible in a field that had given up on it. Indoor Sciences exists because of what those eighteen years taught me: you cannot hold a standard you do not measure.

Franz B. LarsenFounder and CEO, Saniservice · Co-founder and Director, Indoor Sciences · About the founder

In memoriam

Jon Honesto de Castro

JV · Architect and building scientist · Co-founder and first Director of this practice

This practice was founded by two people. JV de Castro was its daily spirit.

An architect by training and a scientist by temperament, JV spent more than two decades at the meeting point of buildings, technology and human health. He held a degree in Architecture, a Master of Research in Anthropology and an MBA in Digital Communication and Media, alongside certifications in mold, building science and building technology: a combination that let him see what most of the industry could not, that a building is not a backdrop to your health but a participant in it.

The practice began with a laboratory. Franz B. Larsen wanted a laboratory of the company's own, to verify Saniservice's protocols against evidence rather than assumption; JV set it up and led it from its creation, and it remains at the heart of the practice as the Saniservice Department of Microbiology. From that laboratory the two of them built a new department, named it together, Indoor Sciences, and founded it as the first practice of its kind in the UAE and the GCC. Franz gave it its purpose and its place in the company. JV, co-founder of the practice, Chief Technology Officer of Saniservice and the practice's first Director, gave it its daily life: he was in the rooms, at the bench and in the reports, and it is his hand that shaped the work. The framework this practice works by is his: the four elements, the building's skin and its circulation, and the conviction, repeated on every page of this site because he repeated it in every conversation, that a healthy indoor environment should not be assumed. It should be measured.

Most of the essays in our Research section are his, and his thinking shapes everything that will be added to it. What he built is not finished, and it was never meant to be. We continue it as he practiced it, rigorously, curiously and without shortcuts, and we intend to take it further than either of us could have taken it alone.

The Research section of this site is dedicated to his memory.

Read JV's essays

Scientists you can look up.

Every finding we publish is signed by a person with verifiable credentials: licenses and certifications you can check in public registers, not just read here. Every engagement remains under named technical ownership: you will know who inspected, who interpreted the results and who signed the report.

Leadership

Franz B. Larsen

Founder and CEO, Saniservice · Co-founder and Director, Indoor Sciences

Proud to continue what he and JV built together, and to bring it to new heights.

About Franz

Leadership

Mohamed Kassem

Indoor Sciences Manager

Microbiology

Neethu Thomas

Senior Microbiologist · Head of the Saniservice Department of Microbiology

Leads culture, identification and reporting for every sample the practice takes.

Microbiology

Saleem R

Microbiologist · Molecular biology · License 271663

Culture and identification; coordination of overseas ERMI analysis where it is specifically required.

Microbiology

Krishna Sree

Microbiologist

Building science

Jerold Arl Ambe

IEQ Specialist · Architect · IAC2 Mold Certified

Site inspection, thermal and moisture mapping, structural and physicochemical investigations.

Research

Scientific authority should withstand scrutiny. Our research notes set out how buildings behave in hot, humid climates, beginning with Dubai's own hourly climate record and the physics of the cooled room, and explain the methods, assumptions and evidence behind our work. They are written to be checked, not admired. Alongside them stand the essays of Jon Honesto de Castro, who founded this department.

Research Note 01 · The Control Volume

Research

In memory of Jon Honesto de Castro, who built this practice.

Certifications, standards, benchmarks

Measured against published standards, not against opinion.

Certification

ISO 9001 · ISO 14001 · ISO 45001Saniservice, certified by Bureau Veritas, audited without interruption
IAC2International Association of Certified Indoor Air Consultants. The practice's inspectors are IAC2 Mold Certified, verifiable by certificate number in the IAC2 public register; the first IAC2-certified mold team in the UAE.
Two laboratory tiersCulture and identification in the Saniservice Department of Microbiology; where a result must carry formal accreditation, the practice's EIAC-accredited (ISO/IEC 17025) partner laboratory, and the report says which. 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.
Instrument assuranceMeasuring 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.

Standards applied

DM TG 142Mold Remediation and Control (DM-HSD-GU142-MRC2 v1, 12 May 2025)
DM TG 119Indoor Air Quality for Healthy Life (DM-HSD-GU119-IAQ v4, 11 Dec 2024)
DM TG 141Environmental Indoor Air Quality Index (DM-HSD-GU141-IAQI2 v1, 14 Feb 2025)
ASHRAE 55-2023 · 62.1-2025 · 62.2-2025Thermal comfort; ventilation and acceptable indoor air quality
NADCA ACR 2025Assessment, Cleaning and Restoration of HVAC Systems
IAC2 Mold Inspection Standards of PracticeThe inspection and sampling procedure
ASTM D7338Standard Guide for Assessment of Fungal Growth in Buildings
ANSI/IICRC S520-2024Standard for Professional Mold Remediation
WELL Building Standard v2Air, Water and Thermal Comfort concepts, for field assessment

The full list, with what each standard is applied to, is under Advisory.

How the work is divided

Three disciplines. One standard.

Indoor Sciences exists because Saniservice needed proof. Holding one consistency standard across eighteen years of work taught us something simple: a standard only exists where it is measured. So we put in place the instruments, the laboratory and the method to measure it, and we publish our methods and research.

The practice

Indoor Sciences

Investigates and prescribes.

Establishes the diagnosis, the evidence and the acceptance criteria before any corrective work is proposed. The prescription states what is to be done, in what order, and how the result will be verified.

The instrument

Saniservice Department of Microbiology

Measures and verifies.

Operates under defined methods, documented quality controls and traceable reporting. Its results are recorded as measured, before the work and after it, and are never adapted to suit the commercial outcome. Where Saniservice carried out the work, the report says so.

About the Saniservice Department of Microbiology

The service

Saniservice

Executes.

Eighteen years in the finest homes and the most demanding properties of the Emirates, held to a verified standard. The Saniservice mold remediation team executes the prescription. In either case the result is verified against the same documented criteria.

Three parts of one group, held apart by procedure: the criteria are written before the work, the measurements are recorded before and after it, and the verification is the same whoever carried it out. A finding from this practice is a finding.

Put the practice to work

An engagement begins with a question. Diagnostics answers a single one with a single report; Advisory takes responsibility for the whole arc, from baseline to verification. Either way, a building scientist responds within one business day.

Request an assessment 800-MOLDS (800-66537)

The report is the proof. The result is air you stop thinking about.

Every report the practice issues carries this mark, the method beside the findings, and the signatures of those who measured.

Questions

The question we are asked most.

Is Indoor Sciences the same company as Saniservice?

Yes. One company. Indoor Sciences is the building-science consultancy that investigates, tests, prescribes and verifies; the Saniservice mold remediation team and the air-conditioning teams do the work. Same front desk, same laboratory, same address.