Ali Ismail works as a Building Information Modelling (BIM) specialist in Dubai Municipality within the project “Dubai BIM Roadmap”, which aims to establish unified BIM standards and permit regulations for all Dubai building permitting authorities.

Ismail holds a Master of Science degree in civil engineering from TU Dresden-Germany and writing a PhD dissertation about construction project planning using simulation methods.

Ismail worked as research assistant in TU Dresden between 2009-2019 where he coordinated many EU and German research projects and published about 20 academic paper about BIM, construction project management and other AEC advanced topics

Ismail worked as freelance BIM expert and software architect for various BIM consultancy companies in Germany and Finland and as BIM instructor by the Academy of German Standard Institute.

Ismail is founder and development leader of the Open BIM data server project IFC Web Server.