ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV

This is the kind of comment you hear all the time from expatriates in Dubai, and it sums up the wired atmosphere in this breathtaking municipality. The attitude is akin to credulous incredulity, if that makes any sense. At least once in a working day somebody is going to tell you about the world's biggest, tallest, most sumptuous hotel, golf course, dolphinarium. "Modesty" and "caution" are two words absent from Dubai's dictionary.

Two recent examples. The first is Dubailand, which was formally announced last week. Most new developments in Dubai are suffixed by -land, -city or -world. After you spend a moment pondering the name (Londonland, anybody?), you are inundated with the mind-blowing statistics that accompany it. This is a £3bn-scheme planned for wasteland to the south of Dubai, which will amount to no less than 185 million m² of development. This will include tourist attractions, such as Sport and Outdoor World ("A high-energy world of heroes and champions that will include facilities for rugby, cricket … as well as extreme sports activities") and the world's biggest shopping centre. Altogether, there are 45 "megaprojects" to be completed by 2006.

The second is the Hydropolis, a hotel that will be built partly under the sea. When it is finished, it will be something akin to plonking the Eden centre underwater. The scheme's German developer and architect, Joachim Hauser, describes it as "the beginning of a new era of hotels" – as well as being a wonderful premise for a 1970s disaster movie.

This will also be completed in 2006, as will the low-key scheme just next to it, such as the Palm Jumeirah Peninsular, "eighth wonder of the world" and soon-to-be second home for David Beckham and Michael Owen. The Palm's sand base is about 90% complete. Ironically, the main point about this development – its palm-tree shape – can only be seen from the sky; from the coast, it is just another ill-defined mound of sand on the horizon.

There's something about these wacky and wonderful developments that expands the bounds of the imaginable. What's next? How about Everestcity – a full-scale crystal-and-granite model of the highest mountain in the world made up from hotels, luxury apartments, shopping malls and casinos, with splendid views over Somalia and Pakistan?

Back here on earth, the expat consultants reckon this frenzy of activity could go on for another five years. All of the main developments are to be constructed in that period, which means that UK consultants who want to cash in on the contracts are running out of time. Consultants such as Halcrow and EC Harris, and contractors such as Bovis Lend Lease are looking to double their workforce in the region between now and 2006. And engineer Hilson Moran was in town last week to assess whether it should start operating in Dubai.

Not surprisingly, one of the questions at the forefront of their minds is what their lives will be like if they do relocate to the Gulf. Catch a minute or two with Marcus Burley, Middle East regional director for Mace, and you find that there are three principal factors: the gigantic size of the schemes, the speed they must be carried out at – and the heat.

Burley has now taken over full time as project director of the £600m Jumeirah Beach Residence, which is on the coast due east of the ubiquitous Palm. Mace started as project manager and QS on the job in February. The schedule was to build 35 apartment blocks, average height 40 storeys, containing 6500 flats with a combined area of 2 million m2. The deadline? December 2005 – which the phlegmatic Burley reckons is realistic. "On paper, at least, it's achievable," he says, "the market is more than capable of meeting the material requirements." The job will need 35,000 workers on site at its peak, which Burley describes dryly, as a "long, long one".

As that example shows, the pace is unrelenting. If you are a developer wishing to throw up, say, a bog-standard 40-storey office block in Dubai, it will take four to six months to go from initial decision to work starting on site. And once the job begins, it carries on around the clock, mostly undertaken by labourers from the Indian subcontinent. The only concessions made to the extreme heat is to give the workers an extra hour off for lunch – in any case, you can't pour concrete in the middle of the day. And, according to one sign I see, urinating on site is forbidden.

For the expat consultants, it means being constantly at the beck and call of the clients – who tend to change their minds twice during breakfast. "It's the most frustrating place to work in the world," one consultant says. "In the UK, a client wouldn't dream of ringing a consultant at the weekend. Here they do it all the time." It's even worse in the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast between sunrise and sundown – which means the clients tends to work at night and "phone you at all hours".

Richard Warburton is an energetic 30-year-old who came over to Dubai two-and-a-half years ago to head EC Harris' operations in the Middle East. He's in a good position to compare Dubai E E with the sleepy backwater that is Britain.

"It's a different philosophy over here," he says. "The thing about Dubai is, if you can't do something, someone else will. It's not a can-do attitude, it's a will-do attitude."

As we drive slowly around the sights of the Dubai – the traffic is even worse than pre-congestion-charge London, and public transport barely exists – Warburton thinks aloud about the experience of working here.

First, he says, it upsets your sense of time.

The accelerated economy accelerates the people within it. They live in a strange, speeded-up world. The physical environment undergoes a generational change every other year. The traffic moves slowly because everybody is in such a tearing hurry. He finds a week has passed in what seems like a few days. People move faster, talk faster. There are no seasons. Warburton works five days a week but his office is open for six – the weekend is just Friday, the day of the muezzins. "The weeks just blur into one another," he muses.

Space is disorientating, too. Warburton starts his day by talking with EC Harris' Far Eastern offices about the bills of quantity he has outsourced with them. Late in the evening, he is on the phone to the UK. In between, it is like a John Lennon song, with just about every nationality on earth working together in peace and harmony.

And if you get a moment to yourself, then you can fill it with any pursuit, leisure or sport you can name. Scuba diving? Water skiing? Off-road driving? They all have their dedicated zones.

Or you could also do nothing but shop for the rest of your life …

The Gulf is probably the most puritanical region on earth, but you would not guess that in Dubai. You need a licence to buy booze from shops, but consuming it in hotels, bar or clubs is hardly a clandestine operation. "There is something to do every night of the week," says Warburton, who shows me the invite to a Bacardi Breezer night he has in his pocket.

Clubs in Dubai make Tuesday nights ladies' night, which means that the women get as many free drinks as they want – more often than not, champagne.

What it does not have is any high culture.

If you cannot face life without theatres, museums or art galleries, then this is not the place for you, at least not yet – apparently the government has been considering a "cultureworld", but don't hold your breath.

In terms of politics, Dubai diverges wildly from the regional norms. There is no democracy, of course, but neither are there Saudi-style public executions, terrorist bombings or black-tinted BMWs full of state security personnel. The city is so wholeheartedly dedicated to the getting and spending of money that everything else is secondary.

Dubai does have a class structure, though.

To investigate this, it is necessary to observe a number of car accidents – as a result of which you will find that Arabs are always right and Indians are always wrong. Expats are either right or wrong, depending on whether they were tail-ended by an Arab or an Indian. Well, at least it's simple.

Any trepidation you may feel about the general weirdness of the milieu or energy-sapping work schedules should be tempered by the gains to be had in Dubai. Not least to your career. You can clock up some serious experience in a safe environment, full of some amazing sights – not least the extraordinary hotels, such as the world-landmark Burj al-Arab, designed by Atkins (about £350 a night, apparently).

"It's not the hardship post that people perceive it to be," says Warburton, as we tuck into lunch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. It is true that wages have not reached the giddy heights achieved in the Gulf oil boom of the 1970s – the last ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV international salary guide put the wages for a jobbing QS in Dubai at £32,000-38,000. And the cost of living is only slightly lower than London – largely as a result of the high price of alcoholic drinks. But wages are rising rapidly, and many firms offer perks such as subsidised transport.

Warburton does miss the obvious things, of course – the family and friends he has left back in Britain. Old sweats miss more quirky things. John Heck – who heads Halcrow's Middle Eastern operation, and has been in the area for nearly 30 years – still harkens back to simple pleasures foreign to Dubai. "I sometimes wish that I could go for a walk in the woods," he says wistfully, before swiftly adding: "But no doubt they'll build one of those before long."