Rabbiah Sabbakhan

Rabbiah Sabbakhan is the director of the Department of Permitting Services. He comes to the department with a mixture of government, management and private sector experience.

Before joining Montgomery County, Sabbakhan spent six years as the chief building official with the City of Rockville in the Department of Community Planning and Development Services where he helped transform the Inspection Services Division into a high-performing, customer-focused and solution-oriented operation that engaged extremely well with all permitting stakeholders, plus delivered timely and accurate plan reviews and inspections. Under his leadership in Rockville, the FAST (Faster, Accountable, Smarter, Transparent) initiative was created as well as the Customer Bill of Rights; he also helped launch the Compliance Engine Fire Prevention program.

In addition, Sabbakhan spent seven years at the District of Columbia with the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) as permitting chief, chief building official and interim director. In addition to creating permitting streamlining measures at the DCRA, he led the Paperless Permitting movement with transitioning of permit applications online and the launch of electronic plan review program ProjectDox. Through his vision for professionalizing the department, he initialized the work that would eventually lead to IAS accreditation. While at DCRA, he served on the D.C AIA Board of Directors, Washington D.C. Economic Partnership (WDCEP), D.C. Construction Codes Coordinating Board, Green Building Advisory Council, DDOT/Planning Public Space Committee and the Signage Working Group.

He has worked in the private sector with a national developer on The Yards project in southeast Washington, D.C.

Earlier in his career, Sabbakhan spent 12 years with the City of Richmond as an inspector, plan reviewer and special inspections program manager and was responsible for the successful completion of many of the city’s major economic development projects.

Sabbakhan has a degree in Architecture from the University of Virginia, and he was the first UVA architecture student to study abroad at the American University in Cairo, Egypt during his fourth year at UVA.