Last verified 4 August 2026 against Dubai Municipality's Certification Scheme for Food Safety Persons in Charge (Version 2.0, 6 January 2020), Food Code 2.0 (Version 12, Final Draft, July 2023), and Dubai Municipality's DMChecked platform.
The Short Answer
The Dubai Municipality Person in Charge (PIC) certification is the mandatory food safety qualification for whoever supervises food safety inside a Dubai food establishment. The Food Safety Department of Dubai Municipality owns the scheme and has sole authority to change it, and the scheme defines two certification levels:
- Person in Charge Certification — marketed by training companies as PIC Level 2
- Advanced Person in Charge Certification — marketed as PIC Level 3
The level you need is set by your business type, not your job title. Restaurants, cafés, cafeterias, hotels, catering companies, central kitchens, hospital kitchens, nurseries and school kitchens need the Advanced certification. Butcher shops, fishmongers, fruit and vegetable stalls, prepacked-only groceries, manufacturing plants and food trading companies need the standard PIC certification.
You also cannot simply book the exam. Dubai Municipality requires you to be formally nominated by your employer, registered and authenticated as a Primary or Secondary PIC on its digital food safety platform — Foodwatch, which became DMChecked in 2025 — already holding a Dubai Municipality-approved Basic Food Safety qualification, and to have completed the approved PIC course before you are allowed to sit the assessment.
Which PIC Level Does Your Business Actually Need?
This is the question almost every training-provider page skips, and it decides your course length, your exam length and your fee. Dubai Municipality's certification scheme answers it with a business-type table:
| Business type | PIC requirement | Qualification needed |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant Cat. I (hot holding, cooling, reheating, serving meals) | One per shift, present in the kitchen | Advanced PIC |
| Restaurant Cat. II (preparation and immediate service) | One per shift, present in the production area | Advanced PIC |
| Cafeteria and café | One per shift, present in the kitchen | Advanced PIC |
| Hotels | One per shift, present in each kitchen | Advanced PIC |
| Catering company Cat. I (preparation at service site) | One per shift per kitchen | Advanced PIC |
| Catering company Cat. II (hot holding only at service site) | One per shift | Advanced PIC |
| Central kitchens of restaurants or catering companies | One per shift per kitchen | Advanced PIC |
| Hospital kitchen | One per shift, present in the production area | Advanced PIC |
| Nursing home | One per shift, present in the production area | Advanced PIC |
| Day care, pre-school, school Cat. I (production/preparation) | One per shift, present in the production area | Advanced PIC plus the Nutrition module |
| Day care, pre-school, school Cat. II (tea, coffee, snacks only) | One per establishment | Advanced PIC plus the Nutrition module |
| Bakery/confectionery Cat. I (meat, egg, cream or milk based) | One per shift, present in the production area | Advanced PIC |
| Departmental store/supermarket Cat. I (open high-risk food) | One in each counter handling open high-risk food | Advanced PIC |
| Departmental store/supermarket Cat. II (pre-packaged only) | One per shift | Advanced PIC |
| Food kiosk Cat. II (cooked foods) | One per kiosk | Advanced PIC |
| Bakery/confectionery Cat. II (bread, chocolate, sweets) | One per establishment | PIC |
| Butcher shop | One per establishment | PIC |
| Fishmonger / fish stall | One per establishment | PIC |
| Fruit and vegetable stall (raw whole vegetables only) | One per establishment | PIC |
| Grocery (prepacked food only) | One per establishment | PIC |
| Food kiosk Cat. I (confectionery) | One per licence | PIC |
| Manufacturing plants | One per shift, present in the production area | PIC |
| Food trading companies | One per establishment | PIC |
| Vending machines requiring temperature control | One per licence | Licence holder or manager with PIC |
Read the middle column as carefully as the right-hand one. A hotel with four kitchens does not need one PIC; it needs a certified PIC per shift in each kitchen. The scheme makes one allowance: where several kitchens sit under the same management, a separate PIC is not required in each area unless that area is physically isolated from where the PIC is present. A kitchen or restaurant run by an independent subcontractor or franchisee with its own management needs its own PIC.
Establishment size also drives who gets nominated. The scheme groups businesses as A (large-scale manufacturing, catering, hotels, hypermarkets), B (medium-scale chains and fine dining), C (small-scale standalone restaurants and cafeterias) and D (kiosks and groceries, treated as low risk). In groups A and B the Primary PIC should come from the management system — QA, QC, QHSE or EHS — or from top management if no such function exists, and each unit or outlet gets a Secondary PIC. In small-scale group C businesses the Primary PIC should be the owner where the owner is usually on site, and management must get the nominated person approved by the area food inspection officer.
The Four Parties in the PIC Chain
Most confusion about this certification comes from treating "the training centre" as the whole system. It is not. Four separate parties are involved, and mixing them up is how candidates end up with a certificate that will not stand up at inspection.
You must be nominated by the owner or management of the food business, and be registered and authenticated as a Primary or Secondary PIC on the Municipality's platform before training.
The training company delivers the course. It is approved by the Food Safety Department for one year at a time, must use only the approved material supplied by the certification body, and must notify the Food Safety Department and the certification body at least a week before each course. Sessions are capped at 15 candidates.
The certification body writes and runs the exam and issues your certificate. It must be accredited by the Emirates International Accreditation Centre (EIAC) against ISO/IEC 17024:2012 before it can offer the qualification. Critically, the scheme's impartiality rule says a certification body — and any organisation related to it — shall not provide training for this scheme. Your trainer and your certifier are, by design, different organisations. Highfield Awarding Body for Compliance and TSI Quality Services are examples of approved bodies operating in this role.
Dubai Municipality's Food Safety Department owns the scheme, approves trainers and material, audits the programmes, monitors the examination process, and can recommend suspension or withdrawal of any trainer, training company or PIC certificate.
One practical consequence concerns price: the scheme states that certification bodies and training centres must not charge less than the amount stipulated in the Food Safety Department's circular. There is a floor, so a quote far below market is a warning sign rather than a bargain. Published 2026 prices from approved providers sit around AED 649 per candidate.
Before You Can Book: The Prerequisites
The scheme lists the competency requirements a candidate must meet to become a certified PIC:
- Be formally nominated as PIC by the owner or management of the food business.
- Be registered and authenticated as a Primary or Secondary PIC on the Municipality's digital platform (Foodwatch in the scheme wording, now DMChecked).
- Have successfully completed the Dubai Municipality-approved Basic Food Safety qualification.
- Have basic reading and writing skills in English or Arabic, with at least a high-school-level qualification.
- Be able to communicate effectively in Arabic and/or English and have basic skills to use mobile applications.
- Successfully complete the Food Safety Department-approved PIC certification training.
- Pass the Food Safety Department-approved PIC certification examination and be qualified for certification by the EIAC-accredited certification body.
Approved certification bodies add two operational conditions in practice: you must be employed by a Dubai food business and hold a valid Emirates ID, and you must complete platform training so you can actually use the system. Platform registration is not a formality — it is done under a defined role (Primary PIC, Secondary PIC, Technical Expert or Technical Contact), and inspectors review your digital records during inspections.
Candidates going for the Advanced certification take an additional module. If you already hold an advanced qualification in food safety or in food safety management systems and HACCP, the scheme lets you go straight to the assessment without sitting through the additional module training.
Foodwatch Is Now DMChecked
This is the detail most Dubai PIC pages have not caught up with. Dubai Municipality has replaced the Foodwatch platform with DMChecked, a mobile application published by Dubai Municipality for food safety checks, inspections and compliance management, and part of the Municipality's FoodDXB.AI ecosystem. Businesses already registered on Foodwatch were migrated across automatically, and the old foodwatch.dm.gov.ae address no longer resolves.
For a candidate this creates a naming gap worth knowing about. The certification scheme and the Food Code were written when the platform was called Foodwatch, so your course material, the competency framework and exam questions may still say "Foodwatch" while the app on your phone at work says DMChecked. They are the same system and the same duties: register under your PIC role, run self-inspections, and log observations and corrective actions. Answer exam questions on the Foodwatch wording, and use DMChecked on the job.
Exam Format: What Actually Happens on the Day
The examination is online, delivered through a secure process, and the certification body must supply the devices — computers or tablets — and a reliable internet connection. It is not a take-home or open-web test.
- Standard PIC (Level 2): approved providers run 10 learning hours over two days, followed by a one-hour multiple-choice assessment.
- Advanced PIC (Level 3): 18 learning hours over three days, followed by a two-hour multiple-choice assessment.
- Languages: certification bodies must run standardised online examinations in at least Arabic and English.
- Invigilation: at least one invigilator per 20 candidates, desks normally 1.25 metres apart, and randomised or multiple exam versions where that spacing is impossible. Invigilators cannot read, write or translate for you, and serious misconduct means the exam is cancelled on the spot.
On the pass mark, be careful with what you read online. Dubai Municipality's published certification scheme sets the rules for re-sits without stating a numeric pass mark; the passing score is set and applied by the EIAC-accredited certification body. Approved training providers in Dubai consistently quote 60%, and that is a sensible target to prepare against, but treat it as a provider figure rather than a published municipal threshold and confirm it with your certification body.
The retake rule is published, and it is strict: the certification body shall allow a candidate to re-sit once. If you fail the re-sit, you must attend the full PIC training course again before sitting the examination once more. There is one free swing, not an unlimited series.
What the Exam Tests
The scheme sets the modules and their minimum delivery hours, so the syllabus is not a mystery. Four modules are common to new PIC candidates, recertification candidates and Advanced candidates:
| Module | Minimum delivery hours | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Food Safety | 1 | New, recertification, advanced |
| Pre-requisite Programs | 2 | New, recertification, advanced |
| Understand Hazards and Control Measures | 2 | New, recertification, advanced |
| Managing Food Safety Compliance | 2 | New, recertification, advanced |
| Food Safety Management System | 3 | Advanced only |
| Food Nutrition — School Supplier | 3 | Mandatory for premises with nutritional claims |
Two things follow from this table. First, HACCP is the dividing line: the Food Safety Management System module — the principles of HACCP, managing microbial, physical, chemical and allergen risks, handling raw or partially cooked ready-to-eat foods, and maintaining food safety documentation and records on the Municipality platform — is what separates Advanced from standard PIC. If your business type sits in the Advanced column, HACCP is examinable for you.
Second, the digital platform itself is examinable. The competency requirements state that a certified PIC must be able to use the relevant features of the Foodwatch application to manage self-inspection and reporting, and must use PIC checklists and platform checks effectively. The "Managing Food Safety Compliance" module explicitly covers the food inspection system and how to use the platform. Candidates who prepare only from a generic food hygiene textbook walk into questions they have never seen.
The rest of the competency framework covers operator and staff responsibilities, food poisoning control, personal hygiene and excluding sick food handlers from open food, structural deficiencies, pest control, waste disposal and cleaning programmes, food safety across purchasing through service and transport, correct labelling, and hazard control, monitoring and corrective action.
The Renewal Rule Most Pages Get Wrong
You will find Dubai training pages saying the PIC certificate lasts three years and others saying five. Both numbers come from the same rule, misread.
The scheme states that each certified Person in Charge receives a certificate valid for five years from the date of issuance, and separately that the certified PIC shall undergo a certified refresher training course before the end of the third year of initial certification, or whenever a deficiency in competency is observed. So it is a five-year certificate with a mandatory mid-cycle refresher at year three — not a three-year certificate. Diary the refresher for month 30 or so and you will not be caught out.
This is also why the module table above has a separate "recertification" track. Refresher candidates take the same four core modules rather than a shortened version.
Food handlers below PIC level sit under a different rule: Food Code 2.0 says food handlers should take a refresher or updating course after two years of training, and must be retrained on the Basic Food Safety programme if incompetency in food handling is observed.
If Your PIC Leaves: The 30-Day Clock
This one matters to owners and area managers more than to candidates. When a certified PIC's employment is terminated, the establishment has thirty days to employ a new certified Person in Charge, and the proposed replacement should enrol for training with an approved training provider within 15 days and obtain the certification. Since Advanced PIC training runs three days plus an exam and certification, and Foodwatch registration and Basic Food Safety have to be in place first, a 30-day window is tight. Establishments that keep more than one certified PIC on staff — which the scheme already expects for multi-outlet and multi-shift operations — never face this scramble.
Food Code 2.0: What Is Actually in Force
Dubai Municipality has been developing Food Code 2.0 as a major update, with more than 150 updated standards, new food safety management certification requirements, tighter training-centre monitoring, new food transport vehicle rules and trans-fat regulation. The widely circulated version — Version 12, July 2023 — is marked Final Draft on every page, while the version published on the Dubai Municipality website for food traders and establishments remains Food Code Version 1. Prepare from the published code and the certification scheme; treat the 2.0 draft as a signal of direction.
Its PIC clauses are worth knowing anyway, because they tighten expectations rather than change them. The draft requires every establishment preparing high-risk foods to have at least one active PIC during all work shifts, and requires establishments producing food for high-care settings — hospitals, schools, nurseries, daycare — and for vulnerable populations such as elderly residents to have a certified PIC present for the entire duration of production and at the point of delivery and service. It also expects PICs to use Dubai Municipality's digital tools to report pest infestations, staff illness and exclusions, and delivery and transport incidents, and forbids sharing system credentials.
A Realistic Preparation Plan
If your business type puts you in the Advanced column, prepare around the three-day course rather than trying to absorb 18 hours of material cold.
- Before the course, confirm your Basic Food Safety certificate and your DMChecked registration are both active. Missing either can stop you being registered for the exam at all.
- Learn the numbers first. Temperature rules, holding and cooling limits, illness exclusion periods and cleaning contact times carry a disproportionate share of questions because they are unambiguous to test.
- Learn HACCP as a sequence, not a list. Advanced items ask you to identify the hazard, set the critical limit, monitor it, then pick the corrective action, in that order.
- Practise supervisory judgement. Many items ask what a PIC would do — exclude the food handler, discard the batch, log it in Foodwatch — rather than what a rule says.
- Time yourself. Two hours of multiple-choice in a second language is a stamina test as much as a knowledge test.
Official Sources
- Dubai Municipality — Food Traders and Establishments: the published Food Code and the food establishment guidelines.
- DMChecked: Dubai Municipality's current digital food safety platform, which replaced Foodwatch, and where PIC registration, self-inspection and reporting now happen.
- Emirates International Accreditation Centre (EIAC): accredits the certification bodies permitted to award PIC certificates.
- Certification Scheme for Food Safety Persons in Charge, Version 2.0: the scheme rules for levels, prerequisites, examinations, re-sits and validity, published via an approved awarding body.
Requirements, fees and course schedules change. Confirm the level your establishment needs with your area food inspection officer, and confirm exam and fee details with the approved training provider and certification body before you book.