Interior fit-out companies in Dubai: the vetting checklist

How to check a fit-out contractor: the paperwork to request

Send one email and ask for everything at once:

A company that runs permitted work regularly sends this within a day, because the folder already exists. A company that does not will reply with a company profile PDF and a link to its Instagram. That reply is information too.

Nothing on this list is unusual or insulting to ask for. Landlords ask us for most of it before they will issue a fit-out approval anyway, so we keep the pack ready. If a contractor treats the request as distrust rather than procedure, that tells you how they will behave when a variation is disputed.

• The current trade licence, with the full activity list visible, not cropped
• Proof of contractor registration with the authority that governs your building
• Insurance certificates: Contractor's All Risk, public and third party liability, workmen's compensation, and professional indemnity if they are also producing the design
• The name and registration details of the engineer who will stamp and submit the drawings
• Recent project references in your sector, with a contact name and number at the client side
• A bank reference letter, or audited accounts, if the contract value justifies it
• A sample contract showing the payment schedule, the defects liability wording and the scope exclusions

Fit-out contractor licence in Dubai: read the activity line, not the logo

The trade licence is a single page and people look at the wrong parts of it. The company name and the pretty logo do not matter. The activity list does.

On the mainland, licences come from the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, and the activity that permits physical build work is written in plain language: interior decoration works, building contracting, carpentry and flooring contracting, plumbing and sanitary installation contracting, electromechanical equipment installation. A licence that carries only "interior design consultancy" allows the holder to design and to supervise. It does not allow them to execute the works. We have walked into occupied sites where the contractor was operating outside its licence scope, which means the drawings were signed by somebody else, the site had no proper insurance chain, and the tenant carried a risk they never agreed to.

Free zone companies are licensed by their own authority rather than by DET, and the licence will say so. That is fine, but check that the free zone entity is actually permitted to work outside its zone on your site, because some are not, and the workaround usually involves a third company you never met appearing on the permit.

Check the expiry date too, because licences lapse and a lapsed licence stops submissions cold. Check that the legal name on the licence is identical to the name on the quotation, the contract and the bank account you will pay into; a mismatch between the quoting entity and the invoicing entity is one of the most common ways money goes to the wrong place. And verify the licence number with the issuing authority rather than trusting the PDF in your inbox, since a PDF is the easiest document in the world to edit. None of this takes more than a few minutes.

Where interior fit-out companies in Dubai have to be registered

A trade licence lets a company trade. It does not by itself let that company submit your fit-out drawings to whoever controls your building. Dubai is split between several authorities, and registration with the wrong one is worth nothing to you.

Dubai Municipality governs most mainland areas and issues the building and fit-out permits there. Published guidance puts a complete DM fit-out submission at roughly ten to twelve working days on first review; incomplete or contradictory drawings make that figure meaningless, because the clock restarts on each resubmission.

The Dubai Development Authority covers the TECOM communities, Dubai Design District, Dubai Internet and Media City, Knowledge Park and Dubai Silicon Oasis. Trakhees, the regulatory arm of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation, covers Jebel Ali, Jafza, Palm Jumeirah and the port areas. DMCC runs its own fit-out approval process for the JLT towers, which is the route we work through for offices like the ones we delivered for Solvu Solutions and AD Tyres in Platinum Tower. DIFC has its own system again.

On top of the authority that owns your plot sit the specialist approvals. Dubai Civil Defence issues the fire and life safety NOC, and the fire suppression and alarm work has to be carried out by a contractor registered with them. DEWA handles load applications, meters and energisation, and the electrical works have to be executed by a DEWA-enrolled electrical contractor. Clinics go through the Dubai Health Authority for facility layout and licensing. Food outlets go through the Municipality's food safety side before the kitchen layout is accepted.

Ask your candidate directly which authority governs your address and who inside their team submits to it. If the answer is vague, or if they say the landlord will sort it out, that is a contractor who has not read your fit-out manual. We wrote a fuller breakdown of which body handles what in our guide to Dubai fit-out approvals and which authority applies.

Insurance certificates and what to read on them

Ask for the certificates, not for a sentence in an email saying they are fully insured.

Contractor's All Risk covers the works while they are under construction, including damage to what has already been built. Read the sum insured against your contract value, because a policy written for a smaller job leaves the difference sitting with you. Read the policy period against your programme, since a certificate that expires two months before your handover date is decoration. Read whether your landlord or the building owner is named, because most malls and towers require it and will reject the fit-out application without it.

Public and third party liability covers damage caused outside the works: the flooded unit below yours, the visitor injured by a delivery in a shared corridor. Malls set their own minimum limits in the fit-out manual, and those limits are usually higher than the policy a small contractor carries by default. Check the number in the manual before you check the number on the certificate.

Workmen's compensation covers the people on site. If a contractor cannot produce it, they are either uninsured or the labour is coming through someone else, which brings you back to the question of who is actually building your unit.

Professional indemnity matters when the same company designs and builds. It covers the design decision that turns out to be wrong, which is a different risk from the wall built in the wrong place. If a contractor is selling design and build, PI belongs in the pack. If they are building to a consultant's drawings, the consultant should be carrying it.

Financial capacity, and whether they can post a bond

You are asking a company to buy materials, pay subcontractors and run labour on your site for weeks before some of your money arrives. Their balance sheet is your risk.

The practical test is whether their bank will issue a performance bond in your favour. A bond is a bank guarantee that pays you if the contractor abandons the job or fails to fix defects. If a contractor cannot get one, their bank has formed a view of their financial position that you have not, and you should treat that as the answer. Ask the same question about an advance payment guarantee if you are paying a mobilisation instalment.

Then look at the payment schedule itself. It should be tied to visible milestones, not to calendar dates: mobilisation and approvals, first fix MEP complete, ceilings and partitions closed, joinery installed, testing and commissioning, handover. Retention is typically five to ten percent held back and released against the defects liability period, usually in two parts. A schedule that front-loads seventy percent of the value into the first two payments is a financing arrangement, not a build programme, and you are the lender.

In-house joinery and MEP, or a chain of subcontractors

Nobody builds a fit-out entirely alone, and a contractor who claims otherwise is exaggerating. The useful question is which parts are theirs and who the others are.

Joinery is the honest test. Ask where the reception desk, the wall panelling and the kitchen units are actually made, and ask to see the workshop. Al Quoz and DIP are full of them, a visit takes an hour, and it tells you more than any portfolio. A contractor with its own production controls the timeline on the items that are always late. A contractor that buys joinery on the open market can still deliver well, but their programme depends on somebody else's queue, and you should know that before you agree a handover date.

For MEP, ask for the names of the electrical and fire contractors and their registrations with DEWA and Civil Defence. Named subcontractors in the contract are worth having, because it stops the cheapest available crew appearing on site in week six.

The defects liability period, and what falls outside it

The defects liability period is the window after handover during which the contractor comes back and fixes what fails. Twelve months from practical completion is the normal position on commercial fit-out in Dubai. Anything shorter should be questioned. Anything longer is usually a sales line unless it is actually written into the contract.

What sits inside it is workmanship and installation: joinery that moves, a leaking connection at a sanitary fitting, a door that drops, a chilled water valve that was never commissioned properly, paint that fails on a substrate that was not prepared. What sits outside it is fair wear, consumables like lamps and filters, damage caused by the tenant or by another contractor after handover, and anything on a maintenance regime that nobody carried out.

A response time makes the clause real rather than decorative, so a defect notified on Sunday does not get looked at in March. So does retention money still held back, because a contractor with nothing outstanding has no commercial reason to answer the phone.

References that are worth calling

Two or three is enough, provided they are recent and in your sector. A brilliant villa reference tells you very little about how a company handles a mall unit with night work windows and a landlord inspector.

When you call, skip the question about whether they were happy. Ask how many variations came up and how they were priced. Ask how long the snagging list was at first inspection and how long it took to close. Ask whether the Civil Defence inspection passed the first time, and if not, why not. Ask who from the contractor attended handover, and whether that was the same person who sold the job.

Ask us for the same, and expect the same standard. Our completed work, from the Gashisha and Dr Sheesha restaurants on Sheikh Zayed Road to the Saudi Dates Centre unit in Dubai Hills Mall, is listed on our projects page with the sector and the building named, so a reference call is straightforward to arrange.

Red flags when you talk to fit out companies in Dubai

Some answers should end the process rather than start a negotiation.

Reluctance to sign a written contract, or a preference for keeping the agreement in WhatsApp messages, removes every protection you have. A demand for a hundred percent payment before mobilisation does the same thing, and no legitimate commercial contractor works that way. An inability to name the engineer who will submit the drawings usually means the submission is being borrowed from another company.

Refusing to share insurance certificates or references is a decision, not an oversight. So is dismissing questions about approvals with reassurance instead of a route: if a contractor cannot tell you which authority governs your address, they have not read your lease or your fit-out manual. A per square foot figure quoted before anyone has seen a drawing is a placeholder that will be revised upwards. And a bank account in a name that differs from the licence is where the conversation stops entirely.

Sector notes that shift the checklist

For offices, weight the MEP and fire side. Ceiling voids, sprinkler relocation, smoke detector coverage and the base build HVAC capacity decide whether your layout is buildable at all, and the Civil Defence NOC governs your occupation date.

For restaurants and cafes, the kitchen drives everything. Grease trap sizing and discharge route, exhaust and make-up air, wash-down finishes and the food safety layout approval all come before the dining room design gets interesting. A contractor without F&B on their reference list will learn this on your money.

For clinics, add the Dubai Health Authority layout approval and infection control requirements: room sizes, sink positions, finishes that survive disinfectant, medical gas if applicable. The DHA route runs alongside the building permit, not after it.

For retail in malls, the landlord's fit-out manual is the governing document before any authority. Shopfront line, floor loading, allocated electrical capacity, night working hours, hoarding specification and access routes are all fixed by mall management, and the fit-out deposit is refunded against compliance.

For warehouses and industrial units, structural alterations, mezzanines and racking bring in structural sign-off, and the fire strategy for storage is a different conversation from an office ceiling.

What to fix in the contract before you sign

Get the scope exclusions written down, because the fight is always about what was assumed to be included. Get the payment milestones tied to work, not weeks. Get the programme in with a stated mechanism for delay, including delays caused by authority approvals, which nobody controls. Get the variation procedure agreed in writing before the first variation exists, since agreeing it afterwards never goes well.

Then define handover properly: what practical completion means, who attends the snagging inspection, how long the contractor has to close the list, and what happens to retention. We set these out openly in our process, and any serious contractor should be willing to do the same before a deposit moves.

If you want a second opinion on a contractor's document pack, or on a quotation that reads strangely, call us on +971 56 508 0888. We would rather answer that than be brought in to finish a job somebody else abandoned in first fix.