United Arab Emirates

A mature market where the contracts are sophisticated and each element of a claim is tested against its own records.

Conditions on the ground

Developers and authorities generally operate under well-drafted FIDIC-based conditions. That moves the contest from entitlement in principle to entitlement in evidence.

Where the contract is sound, the weak point is administration: notices served late, instructions given verbally, records assembled after the fact rather than as the work proceeds.

A large operational estate has accumulated over two decades of development. Much of it is now on its second or third operator, each inheriting the information gaps of the last.

Mixed-use and master-planned assets complicate the register, because the boundary between owned, common and demised assets is frequently unclear in the handover documentation.

Where it bites in the lifecycle

Inception & Development

The decisions taken before anything is built, and the operating consequences they quietly fix in place.

Delivery & Controls

Governance, cost, schedule and risk during construction, and the difference between progress and health.

Handover & Transition

The seam where information, accountability and intent are most often lost.

Operations & Asset Management

Knowing what you own, where it is, what condition it is in, and what it will cost to keep.

Recent writing

28 September 2026Operations

What capital figures record, and what they leave elsewhere

Gross fixed capital formation records the fixed assets acquired in a year, less disposals; in plain terms, investment spending. It does not measure what an asset is worth, what has been completed or what has entered service. Across the asset's lifecycle, its operation, maintenance, information, replacement and eventual disposal are governed and recorded under different rules, in budgets, registers, contracts and accounting records. What the figures show, what they cannot show, and where to look for the rest.

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27 September 2026Delivery

An extension of time is tested against records made during the delay

A claim for more time turns on three separate questions. Was the contract's notice procedure satisfied? Is the event one for which the contract allows an extension, or whose risk it otherwise places on the employer? Did it actually delay completion? Money is a separate claim, with its own proof of causation and amount. Each question is later tested against what was written down while the event was happening, by whichever party has to prove the point. Records do not create entitlement, a record of an event does not prove that it delayed completion, and the prevention principle does not rescue a claim under every contract or every governing law.

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Correspondence

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