In-House Brief: The Case for Adjudication in the GCC
Professor Indrawansa Samaratunga
Steven Hunt of C&IDS
30 September 2026
For those of us who believe adjudication should be the future for the efficient and cost-effective resolution of construction disputes in the region, there is some, albeit limited, scope for optimism. If adjudication is to become truly effective, legislative and judicial change is needed. That said, in this paper we promote adjudication as an effective means of dispute resolution notwithstanding its shortcomings in the context of enforcement.
Before setting out the pros and cons, it is worth first understanding what is meant by adjudication in the context of construction disputes. Adjudication is a short-form method of dispute resolution. It delivers a decision within weeks rather than months or years, and it is comparatively inexpensive to run when set against arbitration or court litigation. The decision is temporarily binding: the parties must give effect to it now, pending final resolution of the dispute through arbitration or litigation should either party remain dissatisfied.
This is broadly the model reflected in the standard FIDIC approach, through the Dispute Adjudication Board (DAB) under Clause 20 of the 1999 forms and the Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Board (DAAB) under Clause 21 of the 2017 forms, where the board must decide within 84 days of referral. Readers familiar with adjudication in the UK will recognise a similar model, but one given statutory force: a 28-day process under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. In the GCC, by contrast, adjudication exists only in contract, and as such it can be, and frequently is, ignored.
It is also helpful to reflect on what adjudication is not intended to be. Adjudication is not arbitration by another name. Because of its short-form nature, it can rarely provide a full appraisal of the evidence and legal arguments. That is why the decision is only temporarily binding: a party dissatisfied with the outcome retains its right to a full hearing in arbitration or litigation. Judged by its purpose rather than by the standard of a final award, adjudication has much to offer and need not be a compromise on quality; in the hands of the right adjudicator or panel, a short process will in most cases, still produce a fair and well-reasoned outcome.
The absence of statutory force has held adjudication back in the region, and its shortcomings are well documented. This paper first sets out those shortcomings, then examines the recent developments that give cause for optimism, and finally explains why adjudicating a dispute is worthwhile even where enforcement of the decision remains uncertain. The focus is the UAE, where the most significant developments have taken place, but the analysis applies to FIDIC-based contracting across the GCC.
The shortcomings
The difficulties with adjudication in the region have been recognised for some time. As an Al Tamimi & Company analysis observed 10 years ago,1 the region has long needed a faster and cheaper alternative to arbitration, yet DAB provisions in FIDIC contracts were routinely struck out or simply ignored. The principal shortcomings:
No statutory footing. There is no security of payment legislation in the GCC. Adjudication depends entirely on the contract, and there is no express regime for enforcing a DAB decision.2
A gap in the 1999 forms. Sub-Clause 20.7 of the 1999 forms did not address how to enforce a decision that had been challenged by a notice of dissatisfaction. The Persero litigation in Singapore exposed this gap, and FIDIC responded with a 2013 Guidance Memorandum recommending amendments.3
Uncertainty in the local courts. It has been unclear how the onshore courts would treat an interim arbitral award giving effect to a DAB decision while the underlying dispute remained undecided. That uncertainty carries a risk of ancillary litigation and wasted cost.
Employer resistance. Employers generally control risk allocation in the region and have been wary of adverse decisions on time and money. Many have regarded the up-front cost of a standing board as unjustified.
Boards not appointed. Even where the clause survives, standing boards are rarely appointed at contract formation in the UAE, and parties tend to appoint an ad hoc board only once a dispute has arisen.4 This risks diminishing the dispute avoidance benefit of a standing board.
The Al Tamimi analysis concluded that adjudication would need a cultural shift among employers, and possibly statutory intervention supported by a body of local judgments, before it gained real traction in the region.5
Grounds for optimism
Recent developments go a considerable way towards addressing each of these shortcomings. They fall under four headings: the contract forms, the law and the courts, institutional support, and government adoption.
Key developments
2026 – arbitrateAD introduces Adjudicator Appointment Rules6. An institution now appoints DAB and DAAB members, administers challenges and replaces members, removing a common cause of deadlock.
November 2025 – Dubai Law No. (8) of 20257. Mandates ADR, including adjudication by specialist committees, for certain low-value construction disputes in a particular sector. While it has very limited application it is, nevertheless, the region’s first statutory move in this direction.
June 2025 – ADPIC and arbitrateAD MoU8. arbitrateAD becomes the appointing authority for adjudicators and DAABs under ADPIC’s Capital Projects Standard Contracts.
December 2024 – FIDIC DAAB practice note9. Encourages early introductory meetings and recommends drafting against delaying tactics, including sanctions for non-compliance.
August 2024 – Revised Abu Dhabi Government Construction Contract10. The ADGCC, mandatory for government capital projects, now requires a DAAB during performance. Its decisions bind unless revised by amicable settlement or arbitral award.
February 2024 – arbitrateAD replaces ADCCAC11. A modern Abu Dhabi institution, with the ADGM as default seat, later extending into adjudicator appointment.
July 2023 – Dubai Court of Cassation, Case No. 1514 of 202212. Contractual pre-conditions to arbitration go to admissibility, not jurisdiction. Courts will review a tribunal’s findings on admissibility only sparingly.
June 2018 – UAE Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 on Arbitration13. Article 39 gives tribunals express power to issue interim and partial awards, which are enforceable before the UAE courts.
December 2017 – FIDIC 2017 suite14. Standing DAABs become the default. Sub-Clause 21.7 allows a failure to comply with any DAAB decision to be referred directly to arbitration, with the tribunal empowered to order compliance by interim or provisional measure or award.
The contract forms. Sub-Clause 21.7 of the 2017 forms is FIDIC’s answer to the Persero gap. A party that fails to comply with a DAAB decision can be taken straight to arbitration on the failure itself, without the merits being reopened. FIDIC’s 2024 practice note goes further, encouraging parties to draft express consequences for non-compliance.
The law and the courts. Article 39 of the 2018 Arbitration Law gives a UAE-seated tribunal clear power to make the interim award on which the Sub-Clause 21.7 route depends. Separately, in Case No. 1514 of 2022, the Dubai Court of Cassation departed from its earlier approach (in Cases Nos. 140/2007 and 124/2008) that failure to satisfy a contractual pre-condition deprived the tribunal of jurisdiction.15 It held that such pre-conditions go to admissibility, and that the likely consequence of non-compliance is an adjournment of the arbitration rather than its termination. The case concerned a referral to the Engineer under a FIDIC contract, but the reasoning applies equally to a DAB referral. It signals a court more willing to respect the tiered process agreed by the parties and less willing to let procedural objections derail it.
Institutional support. arbitrateAD now acts as appointing authority for DAB, DAAB and dispute board members, both under contract and on joint request, and under its Adjudicator Appointment Rules it administers challenges and replacements. The appointment deadlock that has often stalled ad hoc boards now has an institutional answer.
Government adoption. The cultural shift that commentators called for has begun, and it has come from the employer side. The revised ADGCC makes the DAAB mandatory on Abu Dhabi government capital projects, and ADPIC has described its forms as based primarily on FIDIC 1999 but incorporating key 2017 DAAB concepts.16 Dubai’s 2025 law, though narrow, shows legislative interest in adjudication as a first-tier process.
What remains unresolved
These developments are significant, but they do not remove every difficulty.
Direct enforcement. There is still no route to enforce a DAB decision directly in the onshore courts, and no reported onshore judgment enforcing, or refusing to enforce, a DAB decision itself. Sub-Clause 21.7 provides a faster road into arbitration, but it is still arbitration.
1999-based forms. Where a contract is based on the 1999 wording and has not adopted the 2017 approach or the 2013 Guidance Memorandum, the Persero problem may still arise.
Precedent. Onshore UAE courts do not follow binding precedent, so Case No. 1514 of 2022 is persuasive rather than binding, and it is a Dubai decision rather than an Abu Dhabi one.
Private sector practice. Outside Abu Dhabi government work, standing boards remain the exception.
The case for adjudicating notwithstanding the shortcomings
Enforcement is the wrong test for whether adjudication is worthwhile. Most of the value of a DAB or DAAB is realised before any question of enforcement arises, and even an unenforced decision changes the position of both parties.
Most disputes are avoided or settled, not enforced. A standing board’s principal work is dispute avoidance. Survey data suggests that in 45% of cases individual respondents said avoidance led to the dispute being avoided entirely.17 Parties also often resolve differences simply to avoid being judged by their peers on the board.18
Most decisions are complied with. The same survey found that 32% of individual respondents always complied with binding decisions and a further 32% complied most of the time. Parties also often followed non-binding recommendations. The enforcement problem arises only in the minority of cases where a party refuses.
Non-compliance is a breach in its own right. Under the 2017 forms, the parties must comply promptly with a DAAB decision whether or not a notice of dissatisfaction has been given. Under Sub-Clause 21.7, the successful party can arbitrate the failure to comply on its own, without reopening the merits. That is a much narrower and faster arbitration than the underlying dispute.
The decision may become final. If the unsuccessful party does not serve a notice of dissatisfaction within 28 days, the decision becomes final and binding. A party that treats the board as a formality risks losing the right to challenge the outcome.
Tribunals take notice. Arbitrators are not bound by a board’s decision, but they are influenced by it and draw adverse inferences where a party has unjustifiably refused to comply.19 A party that ignores a decision starts the arbitration at a disadvantage.
It is usually a pre-condition to arbitration. Where the contract requires a DAB referral before arbitration, a party that bypasses it faces an admissibility objection. Following Case No. 1514 of 2022, the likely consequence in Dubai is that the arbitration is paused until the referral is made. The forum is not lost, but time and cost are.
It sharpens the dispute and the commercial position. Even a challenged decision narrows the issues, tests the evidence and gives both parties an independent view of their prospects. That is often what moves a dispute to settlement. For a contractor, a favourable decision also provides real leverage in cash-flow negotiations.
It is quicker and cheaper. A DAB decision is due within 84 days of referral, against a typical 12 to 24 months from request to final award for a moderately complex construction arbitration in the UAE.20
None of this makes enforcement irrelevant. It means the right question is not whether a decision can be enforced, but whether the process is likely to resolve the dispute, or narrow the issues in dispute if it does not. In the majority of cases, it will.
Spending better, not simply spending less
The economic case for adjudication should not be reduced to the proposition that it costs less than arbitration or litigation. Properly conducted adjudication requires investment in experienced professionals, and a complex referral compressed into a matter of weeks can demand considerable resources – although nothing compared to a fully contested arbitration.
The better question is whether those resources are being spent at the right time and to better effect.
Construction disputes consume more than legal and expert fees. Unresolved issues can affect cash flow, occupy management time, delay commercial decisions and damage relationships between parties who may still need to work together to complete the project. The longer an issue remains unresolved, the greater the possibility that its consequences extend beyond the original disagreement.
Adjudication directs professional resources towards the problem while the project is still live and while the outcome can influence what happens next. A prompt independent decision can provide clarity, allow money and management attention to move on, narrow issues that might otherwise escalate and give the parties a more informed basis for commercial settlement. Even where the matter ultimately proceeds to arbitration, the earlier expenditure may therefore have produced something of continuing value.
Viewed at an industry level, that distinction matters. The objective is not necessarily to spend less on the resolution of construction claims and disputes, but to spend better: directing expertise towards resolving problems promptly, preserving productive commercial relationships and allowing capital and management resources to return to the delivery of projects.
For an economy investing heavily in construction and infrastructure, the benefit of an effective adjudication system should therefore be measured not only by the disputes it resolves, but by the productive activity that timely resolution allows to continue.
Conclusion
Adjudication in the GCC still lacks the statutory foundation that underpins it in the United Kingdom, and direct enforcement of a decision in the onshore courts remains untested. However, the contractual gap has been closed by FIDIC, the arbitration law supports the interim awards on which that fix relies, the Dubai courts have shown respect for tiered dispute resolution, an institutional appointing authority now exists, and Abu Dhabi has written the DAAB into its own government contract.
This paper supports the use of adjudication in the region. Boards avoid disputes, most decisions are honoured, and a party that ignores a decision usually pays for it later in the arbitration. The uncertainty around enforcement should inform how adjudication clauses are drafted and managed; but it should not deter parties from adjudicating.
C&IDS (candids.legal) places experienced specialist construction counsel with contractors and developers across the GCC, and welcomes enquiries about DAB and DAAB provisions on live projects.
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This paper will also shortly be published at www.drsamfze.com.
Notes
Using Dispute Adjudication Boards to Resolve Construction Disputes, Al Tamimi & Company Law Update (first published February 2016).
Lexology, In brief: construction disputes in United Arab Emirates (June 2025).
PT Perusahaan Gas Negara (Persero) TBK v CRW Joint Operation. The contractor obtained a DAB decision in its favour under a FIDIC 1999 contract, the employer served a notice of dissatisfaction and refused to pay, and the contractor went to arbitration to enforce the decision. In the first round, the Singapore Court of Appeal set aside a final award enforcing the decision because the tribunal had not heard the merits ([2011] SGCA 33). In the second, the majority upheld an interim award enforcing the binding but non-final decision pending determination of the merits ([2015] SGCA 30). The litigation showed that the 1999 wording made enforcement of a disputed decision uncertain and slow.
Kayrouz & Associates, How FIDIC Claims Work in the UAE (March 2026).
n 1 above.
arbitrateAD: Adjudicator Appointment; Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, arbitrateAD’s Inaugural Biennial Report: Caseload Trends and New Procedural Rules (June 2026); Baker McKenzie, arbitrateAD Biennial Report 2024-2026 Released (June 2026).
Stuart Jordan, Statutory construction ADR comes to Dubai, Gulf Construction (November 2025).
arbitrateAD, ADPIC and arbitrateAD to Advance Dispute Resolution Practices in Abu Dhabi (June 2025).
Kesikli Law Firm, Dispute Adjudication Boards: Best Practices, Risks and Insights from FIDIC’s December 2024 Practice Note (February 2025).
Legalcommunity MENA, Dentons advises ADPIC on the issuance of an updated ADGCC version (August 2024).
Kluwer Arbitration Blog, Fresh Off The Press: The Latest arbitrateAD Rules (February 2024).
Chatura Randeniya and Ramesh Fernando (Afridi & Angell), Arbitration in the Middle East: Dubai Court of Cassation clarifies the distinction between jurisdiction and admissibility for the first time, International Bar Association (December 2023).
Lexology, n 2 above.
Pinsent Masons, How the FIDIC Red Book handles enforcing dispute adjudication board decisions (December 2025).
Randeniya and Fernando, n 12 above. The earlier decisions are Dubai Court of Cassation Case No. 140/2007 (7 October 2007) and Case No. 124/2008 (16 September 2008).
Fenwick Elliott, Dispute Boards: Do they work? (February 2026).
Addleshaw Goddard, Avoidance: an easy way out when it comes to dispute boards (2023).
Aceris Law, Dispute Boards and International Construction Arbitration (June 2020).
Global Law Experts, Adjudication vs Arbitration UAE 2026 (June 2026).
