Checking a Dubai contractor, and paying without losing control

The checks to do before you transfer anything

The disputes that end up on UAE legal forums often start the same way. A large sum paid against a one-page quotation, to a company the owner never verified, with a security cheque in hand that turned out to be worth less than it looked. The checks below take an afternoon. They are the difference between a contractor you can pursue and a phone number that stops answering.

1. Get the legal name and the licence numberNot the trading name on the social media account. Ask for a copy of the trade licence and the registered address, and read the licence properly rather than glancing at it.
2. Check the licence through a government channelThe UAE government's own portal lists the channels for checking a business licence: the economic department of the relevant emirate, and the federal National Economic Register at growth.gov.ae, which covers all seven emirates. For a Dubai licence it points to two lookups, Dubai Economy and Tourism's e-services search and the Invest in Dubai platform. A Dubai mainland business needs a trade licence from the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), the authority formerly known as the Department of Economic Development.
3. Read the activity list, not just the statusDubai Municipality categorises contracting and engineering-consultancy activities separately and sets binding standards for each. A valid licence is not proof that the firm is licensed for the work you are buying, so check that the activity you need is actually on it.
4. Ask for the Dubai Municipality registrationA trade licence is not the only credential. Dubai Municipality maintains its own Consultants and Contractors Register, which is a separate registration from the DET licence, and says its approved consultants, contractors and suppliers data can be checked through its own system. Ask for the registration and check it there.
5. Ask who will submit the permit, and in whose nameThis is the fastest test of the lot. Administrative Resolution No. (85) of 2019 requires an application for a decoration works permit to be submitted by a contractor approved by Dubai Municipality, and Administrative Resolution No. (109) of 2022 requires a consulting engineer or contractor pre-qualified by the Municipality to file maintenance works through the Dubai Building Permit System. The owner is not a submitting party. If the company cannot file in its own name, it is not approved, whatever the brochure says.
6. Ask for the insurance certificates and read the datesWe could not find a Dubai authority that publishes a required insurance schedule for residential fit-out, so treat cover as a contract term rather than an assumption. Name the policies you want in the contract, ask for the certificates, and check the expiry dates and the sums insured yourself.
7. Take up two references, and ask them about moneyNot whether they were happy. Ask how variations were priced once work had started, how long the final account took to settle, and whether the snag list was closed after the final payment was made.

What you can actually verify, and what nobody publishes

Verification in Dubai is layered. Different bodies hold different parts of the picture and none of them holds all of it, so it helps to know what each check does and does not prove.

What Law No. (7) of 2025 changed, and what it does not do for you

Dubai issued Law No. (7) of 2025 regulating contracting activities in the emirate, announced by the Dubai Media Office on 12 July 2025. Kennedys records that it was published on 8 July 2025 and came into force on 8 January 2026, with contractors already operating given until 8 January 2027 to bring themselves into line. The Media Office release describes contracting activity running through a single Dubai Municipality system covering registration, classification and oversight, reaching every contractor in Dubai including those in special development zones and free zones such as the DIFC, with airport-related contracting carved out.

Penalties under the law run from AED 1,000 to AED 100,000 according to the same release, and a repeat breach within a year can double that to a maximum of AED 200,000. Al Tamimi & Company reports that Dubai Municipality and the supervising authorities can inspect sites, decide complaints made against contractors and impose penalties.

Two limits matter to you as a client. The compliance window runs to January 2027, so a firm's absence from the new register does not yet prove much on its own. And nothing published says that a prospective client can search that register: it is a regulator's instrument first. The same caution applies to Dubai Municipality's updated Contractor and Engineering Consultancy Rating System, reported by Gulf News on 29 June 2025 as coming into force by 2026, with owners and developers feeding into it through surveys on the Build in Dubai platform. Whether the resulting scores can be looked up by someone choosing a firm is not something the Municipality has stated publicly.

The contract is the only thing protecting your money

DLA Piper's construction bulletin of 8 October 2025 states the point most Dubai advice skips. The UAE has no construction payment statute of the kind found in the UK or Australia, no statutory adjudication, and no legal requirement that your money be ring-fenced. What protects you is what the contract says, and a one-page quotation says almost nothing.

A contract worth signing has attachments. If these are not in the envelope, you are agreeing to a price for an idea.

• The drawing set, listed by number and revision, so both sides know which version was priced
• A bill of quantities with rates, not a lump sum, so a variation can be priced against something
• A programme with dates, and what happens to them if you are late giving a decision
• The variation procedure: who prices extra work, on what rates, and who signs it off before it is built
• Payment stages tied to inspected milestones rather than calendar dates
• Retention and the defects liability period, in figures and in days
• Who applies for the permit, in whose name, and who pays the authority fees
• Named products and finishes, with what happens if a specified item cannot be sourced
• The snagging and handover process, and what counts as completion
• Which parts of the work will be subcontracted, and to whom

One protection does come from the law rather than the contract. Under the UAE Civil Code, a contractor and the supervising engineer are jointly and severally liable for ten years from handover if the building collapses in whole or in part, or if a defect appears that threatens its stability and safety. Squire Patton Boggs records that the Civil Code was replaced in full by Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, in force since 1 June 2026, and Charles Russell Speechlys, writing on 18 May 2026, places that liability at Articles 821 to 824. Contracts entered into before 1 June 2026 are generally still governed by the old code.

How to stage the payments so you stay in control

There is no standard deposit set by law or by any authority in Dubai, and no published figure worth trusting. Every percentage that circulates for Dubai residential fit-out, the thirty to forty per cent deposit and the milestone splits that go with it, traces back to interior-design and contractor marketing sites writing to justify their own terms. There is no government source and no law-firm source for any of them.

What you can insist on is that money only ever moves against something that exists. An advance should be tied to a signed scope, a dated programme and security for the sum paid ahead. After that, every payment follows an inspection.

On retention, the practice is well attested but it is not a rule. DLA Piper (October 2025) and an article in Chambers of 24 July 2024 both describe a common position of 10 per cent of the contract value, with 5 per cent released at handover and 5 per cent after the defects liability period, and both describe twelve months from completion as the usual defects period. Read that as practice on construction contracts generally rather than as a published benchmark for a villa fit-out. Retention is not mandated by UAE statute, so if it is not written into your contract you do not have it. A claim you may meet online that Federal Law No. 2 of 2014 caps retention at 5 per cent should be ignored: no such law exists.

The security cheque is not the protection you think it is

A security cheque, sometimes called a guarantee cheque, is commonly exchanged on construction work in the UAE, typically to secure an advance payment or performance under the contract. KH Legal, writing on 21 May 2026, confirms the practice and names construction expressly.

The law underneath it has moved. Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2020 amended the Commercial Transactions Law with effect from 2 January 2022 and repealed Articles 401 to 403 of the Penal Code, as BSA Law set out in November 2021; the rules now sit in Federal Decree-Law No. 50 of 2022. A cheque that bounces purely for insufficient funds is no longer a criminal matter, it is a debt you enforce. Chambers, on 11 June 2026, explains the other half: a returned cheque is itself a writ of execution under Article 667, so the holder can go straight to the execution judge instead of first winning a civil case. Bad faith remains criminal under Article 675, which covers ordering the bank not to pay, closing or emptying the account, or signing a cheque so that it cannot be paid, as does forgery under Article 676.

So the cheque is faster than it used to be and weaker than it sounds. KH Legal notes that UAE courts have held an enforceable cheque is not the same as a judgment: it is rebuttable evidence, and the person who wrote it can resist enforcement by showing it was only ever security and that nothing is presently due. Take the cheque if it is offered. Do not treat it as money in the bank, and never let it stand in for a payment schedule that keeps you close to the work.

If the money has already gone

The routes people are usually pointed to are mostly the wrong ones, and knowing which is which saves weeks.

One practical point on the court route. Smaller claims may have to pass through the Centre for Amicable Settlement of Disputes before a court will register them. BSA Law, writing on 20 June 2025, places civil claims below AED 500,000 within the Centre's jurisdiction under Decision No. 4 of 2025, while other firms reading the same decision describe the Centre's role more narrowly. The readings differ, so take advice on your specific claim rather than assuming either version applies to you.

Handyman, fit-out contractor or design-and-build studio

The legal line here is clearer than the marketing one. Administrative Resolution No. (85) of 2019 provides that decoration works in a unit larger than 100 square metres cannot start without a Dubai Municipality permit. Units of 100 square metres or less, and units inside a trade centre, are exempt from the permit, but the work must still be done by a contractor approved by the Municipality. That leaves an unapproved handyman with a much narrower slice of work than most owners assume.

A fit-out contractor prices and builds drawings someone else produced, which works well when those drawings are complete and badly when they are not. A design-and-build studio carries both sides, so the drawing and the price cannot quietly stop agreeing with each other. HST works that way across interior design and renovation and fit-out: the team that draws the project also builds it. Two completed examples are the gym renovation in Al Wasl and the Springfield office fit-out in Business Bay.

Which permit your job needs depends on where the property sits, and that is a separate question covered in our guide to which authority approves your renovation. If you would like a second opinion on a quotation or a draft contract before you sign it, send us the documents and we will tell you what is missing from them.