How to choose a fit-out contractor in the UAE

Choosing a fit-out contractor is mostly an exercise in comparing things that are not comparable. Three companies quote your job. One is a third cheaper. You cannot tell whether that is a bargain or a warning, because none of the three documents describes the work in the same terms.

Here is how to make them comparable, and what to look for once they are.

Give everyone the same information

Half the problem starts before the quotes come back. If one contractor gets a measured drawing and another gets four photographs and a description, they are pricing different jobs, and the difference in their numbers tells you nothing about either of them.

Send everyone the same pack: a plan if you have one, photographs, the scope of what you want changed, the level of finish you are aiming at, your programme, and your budget. People flinch at sharing the budget, but withholding it does not get you a lower price. It gets you a quote for a job you did not want.

What a proper BOQ looks like

A bill of quantities breaks the job into items, each with a quantity, a unit and a rate. It should let you see:

• Quantities. Square metres of tiling, linear metres of joinery, number of doors, number of sockets. Numbers you could check yourself against the drawing.
• Materials by name. Not “flooring” but the product, the thickness and the finish. Not “hardwood” but the species and the grade. Not “quality hardware” but the manufacturer.
• Labour separated from material on the significant items, so you can see where the money is going.
• Preliminaries. Site set-up, protection, waste removal, supervision. If these are missing they will appear later.
• Provisional sums, clearly marked as such, for anything that genuinely cannot be priced yet.
• Exclusions. The most useful section in any quotation.

If two quotes differ significantly, put the exclusions side by side. That is usually the whole story.

Red flags

A single-figure quote for a large job. If the document cannot show you how the total was arrived at, nobody can argue about a variation later except by memory.

No exclusions listed. Every job has them. A quote that lists none has either not been thought through or is relying on you not asking.

A price given before a site visit. For anything beyond a single room, this is a number designed to win the job, not to do it.

Pressure to sign quickly, or a discount that expires. Fit-out is not a retail transaction. A rate that only holds until Thursday is a sales technique.

A very large deposit. Staged payments tied to milestones are normal and reasonable. A big up-front payment with nothing to show for it transfers all the risk to you.

Vagueness about who is actually doing the work. Ask which trades are in-house and which are sublet. There is nothing wrong with subletting, but you should know, because it affects who you can hold responsible and how quickly a problem gets solved. Our own position is that the joinery is made in our workshop rather than bought in, which is a deliberate choice and one you are entitled to ask any contractor about.

Photographs that do not match. If the portfolio is all in one style and your project is in another, ask to see something closer to what you want.

Questions worth asking

• What did you notice on the site visit that I should know about?
• Which parts of this are your own team and which are subcontracted?
• Who will be on site daily, and who is my single point of contact?
• What is the longest lead item and when does it need ordering?
• What is excluded, and what is the most likely variation on a job like this?
• Can I visit a project you are working on now, not just a finished one?

That last question is the most revealing and the least often asked. A finished project has been photographed and tidied. A live site shows you whether the team protects finished work, whether materials are stored properly, and whether anyone is in charge.

Checking the basics

Confirm the company is licensed for the work it is quoting for, and that the entity on the quotation is the entity you will contract with. Ask how long they have been trading and look for evidence rather than a claim. Repeat clients are the strongest signal available: developers and businesses do not go back to a contractor who missed a handover.

Then read the contract against the conversation. The scope in the document should match the scope you discussed, the programme should be there, and the variation process should be written down: who can authorise one, how it is priced, and how it affects the completion date. If the contract is silent on variations, that silence favours the contractor.

Judging the answer, not the price

The contractor worth appointing is usually the one whose quote is hardest to read quickly, because it has the most detail in it, and who told you something about your own property that you did not know.

If you want to see how we answer these questions, send us the same pack you are sending everyone else. We will tell you what the scope costs, what we would change, and where we think you are about to spend money in the wrong place.