Choosing a contractor is the single decision that most influences whether a development finishes on time, on budget and to the standard the owner imagined. In Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that decision carries extra weight: two regulatory regimes, two labour markets, two sets of material supply chains, and — increasingly — projects that straddle both.
Having delivered commercial, residential and industrial projects in both markets since 2016, we've seen the same avoidable failures repeat. Below are the ten questions we'd ask if we were the client.
The short version: the cheapest tender is rarely the cheapest project. Interface risk — the gaps between separately-contracted trades — is where budgets actually die.
1. Is the contractor licensed and classified for your project size?
In Egypt, contractors are registered with the Egyptian Federation for Construction & Building Contractors and carry a classification grade that caps the contract value they may legally undertake. In Saudi Arabia, contractors hold a classification certificate from the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing, graded by field and by value.
Ask for the certificate, check the grade against your project's value, and confirm it hasn't lapsed. A contractor working above their classification is a legal and financial exposure for you, not only for them.
2. Have they delivered your building type — not just your building size?
A 40,000 m² warehouse and a 40,000 m² business center share almost nothing operationally. The warehouse is a steel-and-slab problem. The business center is an MEP, façade and fit-out coordination problem with a hundred more interfaces.
Ask for two or three completed projects of the same type, and ask to visit one. On our own Bin Sulaiman Business Center in Jeddah — 42,150 m² across construction, finishing and MEP — the coordination load, not the concrete volume, defined the programme.
3. Who actually performs the work?
Many contractors subcontract 70–90% of scope. That isn't inherently wrong, but you need to know it. Ask which trades are self-performed and which are subcontracted, then ask how the subcontractors are selected, supervised and paid.
A contractor who self-performs the critical path — usually structure and MEP — has direct control over the schedule. One who subcontracts everything is a coordinator, and should be priced and judged as one.
4. Can they hand you a single point of accountability?
This is the question we care most about. When engineering, construction, MEP and finishing sit with separate contracts, every interface becomes a commercial argument. The waterproofing contractor blames the concrete contractor for the substrate; the MEP contractor blames the structural contractor for the sleeve locations; nobody is wrong, and you pay for all of it.
Integrated delivery isn't a marketing word. It's the removal of the seams where cost and time leak out.
Ask whether the contractor can carry the full discipline stack — engineering, construction, finishing, insulation, steel, MEP and project management — under one accountable team, and what changes commercially if they do.
5. What does their MEP coordination process look like?
MEP is where schedules break. Ask specifically: do they produce coordinated shop drawings before installation? Do they run clash detection? Who resolves a clash between a duct run and a structural beam, and at whose cost?
If the answer is "we handle it on site," expect rework. Read more in our explainer on how MEP systems are actually integrated.
6. Is the contractor's cash flow healthy?
Construction insolvency is contagious. A contractor funding your project from another project's advance payment is a risk you inherit. Reasonable diligence: audited financials for two years, current bank facilities, and a frank conversation about their current order book versus capacity.
In both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, ask about bonding capacity — advance payment guarantees and performance bonds — because a bank's willingness to bond them is a third-party read on their solvency.
7. How do they price variations?
Variations are inevitable. What matters is the mechanism agreed before they arise. Insist on an agreed schedule of rates for common variation items and a defined markup on cost for anything outside it. Without it, every change becomes a negotiation you enter from a weak position, because the contractor is already on site.
8. What's their approach to materials in a volatile market?
Both markets have seen sharp swings in steel and cement pricing and, in Egypt, significant currency movement. Ask how the contract handles material escalation: fixed price, escalation clause tied to a published index, or owner-supplied materials for the volatile items. Each is defensible; silence on the question is not.
9. Who is the actual project manager, and what else are they running?
You are not hiring a company; you are hiring a team. Ask for the named project manager and site engineer, their CVs, and how many other active projects they carry. A strong PM split across four sites is weaker than a competent PM dedicated to yours.
10. What does handover include?
A project isn't finished when the building looks finished. Agree the handover package up front: as-built drawings, MEP testing and commissioning certificates, equipment warranties, operation and maintenance manuals, and a defined defects-liability period with a retention mechanism.
Owners who skip this discover it two years later, when a pump fails and nobody can find the model number.
A practical shortlist scorecard
- Licensing & classification — valid, and graded for your value.
- Type-matched experience — two comparable completed projects, one visitable.
- Self-performed critical path — structure and MEP under direct control.
- Single accountability — one team across disciplines, one contract.
- Coordinated MEP — shop drawings and clash detection before installation.
- Financial health — audited accounts and demonstrable bonding capacity.
- Agreed variation rates — before mobilisation, not after.
- Escalation mechanism — explicit treatment of material and currency risk.
- Named, available team — with checkable references.
- Defined handover package — as-builts, commissioning, warranties, DLP.
First Builders delivers all eight construction disciplines under one accountable project-management team across Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Tell us about your project — we respond within one business day.
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