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

Mar 23 2026

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.

Why These Claims Fail

Scope has no ceiling. “Coordinate to LOD 400” is a performance obligation — not a scope boundary. If there’s no coordination cycle limit, no design freeze milestone, no resubmission cap, then everything that follows is “part of scope.” You can’t claim a variation from a baseline that doesn’t exist.

Notices are served too late — or never. Under FIDIC Sub-Clause 20.1 / 20.2, the notice window is 28 days from becoming aware of a claim event. On a fast-track project, that window closes quietly. Miss it and you don’t lose your entitlement entirely — but you hand the other side their first line of defence. In practice, that’s usually enough.

There are no contemporaneous records. BIM rework hours logged in real time against a specific cause are evidence. Hours reconstructed at month five from email threads are an argument — and a weak one. The BIM team isn’t logging this way because nobody told them to. That’s a commercial failure, not a BIM one.

Commercial is involved too late. On most projects we’ve seen, the BIM manager and the commercial team don’t talk seriously until something has already gone wrong. By then, the notices are missed and the records are incomplete.

What a Recoverable Claim Actually Needs

Three things — all decided before the project starts:

A scope ceiling in the BEP. Coordination cycles, freeze milestones, resubmission rounds. Without this, there’s no baseline to argue variation from.

A logging format given to the BIM team from day one. Weekly. By event type. Cross-referenced to the instruction or drawing revision that caused the work. Ten minutes a week during delivery. Hundreds of hours to reconstruct after the fact.

Notices served when the event happens. Not at month-end. Not with the interim application. When the event happens.

The Bottom Line

BIM rework is claimable — under the right contract, with the right setup.

Most contractors aren’t set up for it. Not because the entitlement isn’t there. Because the commercial infrastructure around BIM was never built.

That’s fixable. But only before the project starts.