Extensions of time under FIDIC Clause 8 in the UAE
An extension of time moves the completion date and takes the contractor out of delay damages. It is won on the grounds in the contract and the notice served on time, not on the size of the delay.
QScope Team · 22 July 2026 · 6 min read
An extension of time on a FIDIC contract in the United Arab Emirates does two things. It moves the Time for Completion, and by doing so it protects the contractor from delay damages for the period it covers. What it does not automatically do is pay for the delay. Time and money are separate questions on a FIDIC job, and treating them as one is a common and expensive mistake.
The grounds are defined
Sub-Clause 8.4 lists the causes that entitle the contractor to an extension. They include variations, exceptionally adverse climatic conditions, unforeseeable shortages, and delays caused by the employer or by others for whom the employer is responsible. A delay that does not fall within a listed ground, however genuine, does not earn time. The first test of any extension claim is which sub-paragraph of 8.4 it sits under.
Notice is where claims die
The grounds are only half of it. Under Sub-Clause 20.1, the contractor must give notice of a claim for time as soon as practicable, and not later than twenty-eight days after becoming aware of the event. Miss that window and the entitlement can be lost, whatever the merits. More extensions of time fail on late or absent notice than on the strength of the delay itself, because the notice is a hard deadline and the analysis is a matter of argument.
- Notice within twenty-eight days. Of awareness of the event, to preserve the claim at all.
- Contemporary records. Kept from the notice onward, because the claim is proved from the record made at the time, not the account written later.
- Detailed particulars. Submitted within the further period the clause allows, setting out the basis and the effect on completion.
Keep time and cost apart
An extension of time removes delay damages. Any prolongation cost, the extra preliminaries and overheads of a longer job, is a separate claim, proved on its own facts under the payment provisions. Folding the cost into the time claim, or assuming an award of time carries money with it, is how contractors win the extension and still lose the prolongation. Run the extension for the completion date, and run the cost as the claim it is.
QScope logs each delay event against its FIDIC ground, starts the twenty-eight day notice clock, and holds the time award separate from the cost, so an extension of time is proved on the record rather than reconstructed at the end.