How can contractors warrant timely payment in the UAE construction industry?

Timely payment is very crucial to contractors in the UAE construction industry as in all other countries. Contractors always strive to ensure uninterrupted cash flow to stay in business. Therefore, exploring the possible safeguard measures available to contractors to secure timely payment behaviour in the UAE is significant and worth doing. To do so, an extensive literature review was carried out, then a questionnaire survey was carefully designed and disseminated to collect data from practitioners in the UAE construction industry. Eventually, 74 valid responses, with a fair representation of the UAE construction firms, were used and analysed. The findings identified the top causes as well as the impacts of late payment practices in the UAE. Accordingly, some pragmatic safeguard measures were then proposed to ensure timely payment, including careful negotiation of payment provisions, maintaining contractual records and educating construction teams to effectively administer construction contracts. Most importantly, the study emphasises on the need of a further research to examine the viability of enacting a ‘security of payment’ scheme in the UAE to effectively protect contractors against poor payment behaviours by their employers.