Twenty-eight days to certify, fifty-six days to pay

Without a Security of Payment regime, a Qatar contractor relies entirely on the contract clock. On a FIDIC Red or Yellow Book job that clock has two hands, and both start from the same event: the Engineer receiving the Contractor Statement.

The first clock: twenty-eight days to certify

Under Sub-Clause 14.6 the Engineer must issue the Interim Payment Certificate within twenty-eight days after receiving the Statement and its supporting documents. The IPC states the amount the Engineer fairly determines to be due. If the Engineer disagrees with the Statement, the answer is to certify a different figure inside the twenty-eight days, not to sit on it.

The second clock: fifty-six days to pay

Under Sub-Clause 14.7 the Employer must pay the amount certified within fifty-six days after the Engineer receives the Statement. Read that anchor carefully. The payment period is not fifty-six days from the IPC. It runs from the same starting point as the certification period, the receipt of the Statement, so the Employer window and the Engineer window overlap rather than stack.

In practice this means the Employer has fifty-six days to pay and the Engineer has consumed some of that period certifying. If the IPC is issued on day twenty-eight, the Employer has the remaining twenty-eight days to release the money. If the Engineer certifies early, the Employer simply has longer.

Calendar days, not working days

FIDIC counts in calendar days throughout. Weekends count. The Friday and Saturday weekend common on Qatar sites counts. Public holidays count. This matters when a Statement lands just before a long holiday period, because the deadline does not pause for it. A team used to a working-day regime elsewhere will misjudge the dates if it carries that habit into a FIDIC job.

• Day zero. The day the Engineer receives the Statement. Record it, because everything derives from it.
• Certify by. Day twenty-eight, the Sub-Clause 14.6 deadline for the IPC.
• Pay by. Day fifty-six, the Sub-Clause 14.7 deadline for the Employer, counted from the same day zero.

Why the receipt date is the one to protect

Both deadlines hang off proof that the Engineer received the Statement. On a job with no statutory scheme to fall back on, that receipt is the foundation of every timing argument that follows. Submit through a channel that produces a dated acknowledgement. A Statement that cannot be shown to have been received on a particular day is a Statement whose deadlines cannot be enforced.

Late payment

If the Employer misses the fifty-six days, FIDIC entitles the Contractor to financing charges on the overdue amount under the payment clauses, running until payment. That entitlement is only useful if the underlying dates are clean, which is the practical reason to fix day zero the moment the Statement goes in.