Mubadala Investment Company

Mubadala Investment Company is one of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds — a global investor with over US$300 billion in assets under management across more than 50 countries. ISG was instrumental in supporting the certification of Mubadala's own office space to LEED ID+C Platinum and WELL standards. When a sovereign wealth fund certifies the building it works in every day, it sets the bar for every counterparty, partner, and portfolio company that walks through the door.

Why this is a different kind of project

Most LEED engagements ISG runs are for developers — assets that will be leased, sold, or operated by third parties. Mubadala Investment Company is the opposite: the owner is the occupier. Mubadala is certifying its own headquarters offices, not a tenant fit-out for someone else. That changes the brief in ways that matter.

When a developer certifies a building, the question is "what will tenants pay for?" When the occupier-owner certifies their own offices, the question becomes "what do we want to live with for the next decade?" — and the calculus shifts toward occupant outcomes, post-occupancy performance, and operational durability rather than just leasing-grade certificates. That's the brief Mubadala set for its offices, and it's why the project carries WELL alongside LEED.

LEED + WELL: two rating systems, one project

LEED rates the building. WELL rates the people in it. The two systems were designed to complement each other — and increasingly, the most demanding owners certify both:

• LEED ID+C Platinum — the highest rating tier in the USGBC's interior-fitout system, covering energy, water, materials, and indoor environmental quality.
• WELL Building Standard — the IWBI's health-and-wellbeing standard, covering air quality, water quality, lighting (including circadian-rhythm-aware lighting design), thermal comfort, acoustics, nourishment, fitness, and mental wellbeing.

The credit overlap is significant — both systems care about ventilation rates, low-VOC materials, daylight access, and acoustic performance — but each has prerequisites and validation steps the other doesn't. WELL, in particular, requires performance verification: an IWBI-accredited assessor visits the building post-occupancy and tests measured air quality, water quality, lighting, and acoustics against WELL's thresholds. Many "WELL-targeting" projects never complete the post-occupancy verification step. Mubadala's did.

ISG's role spanned both certifications: LEED ID+C – Platinum level consultancy, WELL certification consultancy, plus the supporting engineering pipeline — Performance Energy Modeling, Daylighting Simulation, Acoustic Consultancy, and Independent Commissioning Services.

The acoustic and commissioning dimension

Two of ISG's specialised capabilities show up clearly on this project. Acoustic consultancy matters for trading floors, board rooms, and senior offices where confidentiality, speech intelligibility, and concentration all depend on getting sound transmission and reverberation right — and Dubai/Abu Dhabi's preference for hard reflective interior surfaces means acoustic targets have to be designed in early, not retrofitted later. Independent commissioning is required as a prerequisite under both LEED and WELL: a third party verifies that the installed mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems actually meet the design intent before handover. This is one of the most common places that LEED submissions fail when handled in-house.

Why this is one of ISG's most-referenced engagements

The Mubadala client logo carries weight in Abu Dhabi. It signals that ISG has passed the security, governance, and procurement reviews that sovereign-wealth-fund engagements require. Inside ISG's portfolio, the Mubadala Investment Company offices project sits alongside Zayed International Airport, the Aldar work, Masdar Accelerator Building II, and the Yas portfolio as part of the consultancy's Abu Dhabi institutional client core.

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