What Separates Contractors Who Recover Variation Costs From Those Who Don’t

What Separates Contractors Who Recover Variation Costs From Those Who Don’t

Same Change Event. Two Different Outcomes.

Two sub-contractors on the same project type. Both receive late design information from the consultant. Both carry out additional coordination work. Both absorb additional cost.

One recovers it. One doesn’t.

The design change was identical. The entitlement, in both cases, was probably real. The outcome was different — not because of legal sophistication, not because of contract type, and not because one had a more aggressive commercial team.

Because one was set up for it before the project started. The other wasn’t.

Why UAE Contractors Keep Repricing the Same Project Twice

Why UAE Contractors Keep Repricing the Same Project Twice

The Reprice Is Not a Surprise. It Is a Pattern.

At some point in the delivery of almost every major construction package in UAE and Saudi Arabia, someone in the commercial team runs the numbers again.

The quantities don’t match what was tendered. The procurement costs have moved. The scope that was priced at tender is not the scope that is being built. A revised cost position goes upward — to the MD, to the client, or to both.

This is called repricing. It is painful, it is expensive, and on most projects it is treated as an exceptional event.

It is not exceptional. It is a pattern. And it happens on the same types of projects, for the same reasons, every time.

Can Contractors Claim BIM Rework Costs in UAE & Saudi Arabia?

The Honest Answer: Rarely. And Almost Always Our Own Fault.

We’ve tried to recover BIM rework costs on projects where the entitlement was real and the commercial position was gone.

Not because the rework didn’t happen. It did. Not because we weren’t entitled. We probably were.

Because by the time we tried to build a claim, we had no notices served, no contemporaneous records, and a BEP that described everything except what triggers a variation.