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.
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. Seventeen 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.
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.
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
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.
Proud to continue what he and JV built together, and to bring it to new heights. About Franz
Leads culture, identification and reporting for every sample the practice takes.
Culture and identification; ERMI coordination with the partner laboratories.
Site inspection, thermal and moisture mapping, structural and physicochemical investigations.
The full list, with what each standard is applied to, is under Advisory.
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 Saniservice Department of Microbiology operates under defined methods, documented quality controls and traceable reporting. Its results are recorded independently of the commercial outcome, before the work and after it. About The Lab
Seventeen years in the finest homes and the most demanding properties of the Emirates, held to a verified standard. Saniservice may execute the prescription, or the client may appoint another qualified contractor. 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.
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.