Find a Construction Disputes & Claims Lawyer

LEXNOVA already publishes a construction contracts category covering the agreements and project documentation behind a project — main contracts, FIDIC-based forms and their amendments, subcontracts and consultant appointments. This page is the disputes-and-claims specialism beside it, and it starts where that one stops: once a notice has been served, a certificate has gone unpaid, a defect has appeared, or termination is on the table.

The distinction is not cosmetic. Transactional construction lawyers and construction disputes lawyers are frequently different people with different careers, and the skills that produce a well-drafted contract are not those that win an argument about the programme three years later. If you are already in a dispute, the useful match is a lawyer who spends their time in tribunals and expert meetings.

Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025 promulgating the Civil Transactions Law was issued on 1 October 2025 and published in Official Gazette No. 809 on 14 October 2025. Article 3 set its entry into force at 1 June 2026, so it is in force now. A surprising amount of published UAE construction material still describes it as a forthcoming reform.

Practically, the provisions that decide onshore construction claims now come from the new instrument. Where a dispute straddles the commencement date, which text governs which part of it is a real question — and although the new law expressly repeals Federal Law No. 5 of 1985 (Article 2 of the promulgating decree-law), it states that it does not apply retroactively to earlier facts and acts unless it provides otherwise. That is a point for a lawyer with the gazetted Arabic, not an assumption.

Decennial liability is the defining long-tail risk in UAE construction. It imposes strict liability on the contractor and on the engineer or architect, for ten years, for total or partial collapse of a building or fixed installation and for defects threatening its stability and safety. A separate three-year limitation period runs from discovery, and both have to be diarised from the correct date.

The rule that gives it teeth is the anti-exclusion rule: an agreement purporting to exclude or limit the decennial liability of the contractor or the engineer is void, and that is understood to be preserved in the new Code. A liability cap negotiated hard at contract stage can therefore be worth nothing against the claim that actually arrives.

Law-firm commentary places decennial liability at specific articles of the new Code and notes that the previous law’s corresponding articles have been renumbered. That numbering was not confirmed against the gazetted primary text, so it is not published here. An unconfirmed article number in a defect claim is a liability rather than a convenience.

The same caution applies to a reported change with real consequences. Two independent sources report that the new Code expressly excludes the main contractor–subcontractor relationship from decennial liability, which would alter how defect risk passes down a contracting chain. Only one gives article numbers and the primary text was not confirmed, so the position is reported, not established, and should not be planned around in either direction.

A UAE construction dispute generally lands in one of three places. The onshore civil courts of the relevant emirate, applying the Civil Transactions Law under Arabic-language procedure and leaning heavily on court-appointed experts. Arbitration, most commonly administered by DIAC. Or the DIFC Courts or ADGM Courts, each a separate common-law jurisdiction with its own judiciary.

Which forum applies is decided by the contract, the location of the project and the identity of the parties, not by preference — and getting it wrong is hard to unwind. The forum question should be settled as a discrete first exercise, because the shape of the claim, the evidence it needs and the timetable it runs to all differ by forum.

Decree No. 34 of 2021 concerning the Dubai International Arbitration Centre was issued on 14 September 2021 and came into force on publication under Article 10. Article 1 constitutes DIAC as a non-governmental, non-profit centre with legal personality and financial and administrative autonomy; Article 2 gives it a head office in Dubai with a mandatory DIFC branch; Article 4 abolished the Emirates Maritime Arbitration Centre and the DIFC Arbitration Institute and DIFC-LCIA.

Article 6(a) keeps agreements naming the abolished centres valid, substituting DIAC, unless the parties agree otherwise; Article 6(b) lets tribunals already constituted continue under their adopted rules. Article 4(b) supplies the default that catches people out — absent agreement on a seat, the seat is the DIFC. Above it sits the federal arbitration statute, Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 as amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 15 of 2023, issued 4 September 2023.

There is no specialist construction tribunal in the UAE: no standing construction court, no statutory construction adjudicator, no dedicated technology-and-construction division at federal level. The body most often cited as if it were one is the Dubai Special Tribunal for Unfinished and Cancelled Real Property Projects, established by Decree No. 33 of 2020, issued on 24 November 2020.

Article 6 gives that Tribunal jurisdiction over claims whose subject matter or cause is an unfinished or cancelled real property project, together with liquidation and investor and purchaser rights. It is a distressed-development jurisdiction rather than a construction-contract one, and does not hear general contractor claims. Article 4 of the same Decree excludes projects located inside the DIFC.

Contractors arriving from the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore or Malaysia routinely expect a statutory payment regime: a right to refer disputes to fast adjudication, mandatory payment notices, statutory suspension for non-payment. Nothing equivalent was located in UAE law. There is no statutory security-of-payment or adjudication regime here.

Everything therefore depends on the contract. Whether a dispute board exists, whether its decisions bind, what a payment notice must say and by when, whether suspension is permitted — all contractual, and all capable of being amended away. Standard-form protections a contractor assumes are guaranteed by law are here guaranteed only by the drafting in front of them.