Home / Insights

Insights

Direct answers to direct questions.

Where the white papers go deep, insights go straight — definitional guides and field notes from live oversight work, in plain language with the answer up front.

01The writing
Regulatory & Authority Governance

Which authority governs your Dubai project — Dubai Municipality, Trakhees or DDA?

Dubai unified the building code and left the counters decentralised. How to establish which authority governs your plot, and what it changes.

Development Finance & Regulatory Governance

How does escrow release actually work on a UAE development, and where does it fall behind the build?

Escrow release runs on an administrative clock; the construction contract runs on a contractual one. Where the gap opens, and how to govern it.

Hospitality Development Governance

How should an owner manage a hotel Technical Services Agreement in the UAE?

The TSA gives a hotel operator approval rights over your design without transferring design liability. What that costs a UAE owner, and eight terms to fix.

Procurement

Design-bid-build, design-build or construction management? A UAE owner's decision guide

Which procurement route a UAE project needs — what design-build actually transfers, why insurance may not follow, and when FIDIC says not to use turnkey.

Owner's Representation

Owner's representative or project manager? What a UAE owner is actually buying

On a Dubai project the owner pays four parties and is represented by none of them. What an owner's representative is, and when you need one.

Procurement

How to appoint a PMC in the UAE: an owner's RFP and evaluation framework

How to run a PMC selection in the UAE: the quality-price weighting, the RFP contents, the evaluation matrix, and what to verify before appointing.

Owner's Representation

What does an owner's representative cost in the UAE — and what should the scope include?

What owner's representation costs in the UAE, on a construction-cost basis — and the scope items most appointments quietly leave out.

Cost & Claims Governance

Variation control for owners: an early-warning system before change becomes a claim

Owner-initiated variations lead UAE construction disputes. How to catch change before it becomes a claim, and what your register must capture.

02Common questions
How often do you publish?

Insights go up when there is something worth saying, not on a schedule. White papers are planned work and appear more regularly; insights are reactive, and a slot that has to be filled gets filled with filler.

What is the difference between an insight and a white paper?

An insight answers a question: what a term means, what a role actually covers, what a clause does to you. A white paper works through a decision an owner has to make, at length, with the evidence on the page.

Do you write about live projects?

Only in general terms. Where a piece draws on current oversight work, the project is not named and figures are changed or removed. An owner who hires us should expect the same discretion.

Can I quote these?

Yes — quote what is useful, with attribution and a link back. Where we cite third-party research, the source is named in the text so you can go to the original rather than relying on our reading of it.

Want the next piece when it lands?

One email when we publish. Nothing else.

Subscribe