Project Disputes

Construction disputes concentrate in places familiar to those who have lived them: delay, extensions of time, and the allocation of their responsibility; undocumented variations and additional works; interim payment certificates and withheld payments; the calling of bank guarantees; and takeover of the works and termination. The decisive factor is often not the contract text alone but what each party documented during execution.

We represent owners, developers, and contractors across these disputes whatever their position - including contracts based on international forms such as FIDIC and their local adaptations, and government contracts governed by the Government Tenders and Procurement Law before their competent forums.

We treat the dispute within the project's context, not in isolation: a delay claim may be managed through negotiation that keeps execution running, and a bank guarantee stopped by urgent measure before it becomes a recovery battle.

Off-plan projects create a web of obligations among developer, purchasers, financier, and contractor under a precise regulatory umbrella - and a project's distress or delay detonates them all at once: purchaser claims, financier demands, a construction dispute, and a regulatory position, simultaneously.

We represent project parties in disputes over delivery, delay, rescission, and refunds; escrow account claims; regulatory positions tied to off-plan sale and lease requirements; and the completion of distressed projects, including the substitution of developers and contractors.

And where distress reaches insolvency, this practice works hand in hand with our insolvency and restructuring expertise - from structuring solutions that keep the project alive to representing parties in Bankruptcy Law proceedings.

The heart of a project dispute is its technical evidence: schedules and delay analysis, quantity surveys, engineering and accounting reports, site records and correspondence. A claim unsupported by organized evidence is a number to be rejected, not a right to be awarded.

We build claims - and demolish them - by the same method: working with engineering and accounting experts on delay analysis and quantum, managing and organizing voluminous document files to serve the theory of the case, and drafting claims that fuse technical proof with legal grounding.

Before arbitral tribunals and court-appointed experts, we know what persuades: a declared analytical methodology, verifiable figures, and an unbroken chain linking fact to document to request.

Choosing the path in a project dispute is an economic decision before a procedural one: a live project meant to be completed dictates different choices from a finished project whose accounts are being settled. Arbitration - particularly under the rules of the Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration - is the prevailing path in major construction contracts, for its confidentiality and the ability to appoint technically versed arbitrators.

We design the resolution strategy on that basis: structured negotiation and mediation where the relationship and the project can be saved; domestic or international arbitration where the contract provides or interest requires; and the competent courts otherwise - alongside parallel management of the urgent measures that preserve rights until the merits are decided.

Then we enforce what we obtained - judgment, award, or settlement - before the enforcement courts, with the same tools our disputes practice commands.