Find out what the subcontract actually does before you sign it.
Send us the contract. Within three working days you get a ranked trap register: every clause that shifts risk onto you, what it costs in real money, the exact redline, and the fallback position to take when they push back.
The clause that ends you is never the one you read twice.
A back-to-back fit-out subcontract runs forty pages. The commercial team reads the price, the programme and the payment terms. The clause that decides whether the job makes money or takes the company down is usually somewhere in the middle, phrased as a concession.
A constructed example, not a client document. On a first read it looks like a cap, which is exactly why clauses like it get signed.
Nothing moves until the NDA is signed.
You are being asked to hand over the document that decides whether a job makes money. That is not a small ask, and we do not treat it as one. Here is exactly what happens to it.
NDA before anything
Signed before you send a single page, on your form or ours. We do not accept a document without one, even if you offer.
Never both sides
Once we read a contract we will not act for the counterparty on it. Not on that contract, not on that project, not later.
One named reviewer
Your file is read by one person you know by name and can call. No pool, no offshore team, nothing subcontracted out.
Encrypted upload, never email
You upload on this site, behind the signed NDA, straight into encrypted storage. Your contract never travels through an inbox and is never forwarded.
Destroyed on your word
Held only for the engagement. Deleted when you say so, and confirmed back to you in writing when it is done.
No case study, ever, without you
Nothing you send appears anywhere, named or anonymised, unless you sign it off in writing first. The specimen on this page is a constructed example, not a client document.
Saudi contracting is a small market and the parties all know each other. Discretion is not a policy line here. It is the only reason anyone would send us anything, so we run the business as if one breach ends it, because it would.
Three days, three steps, one document you can act on.
Send it
Upload the subcontract, the main contract flow-down if you have it, and your tender qualifications. PDF, Word or a scan. Nothing else needed.
We read it against the money
Every clause is tested against your price, your programme and your actual exposure on this job, not against a generic checklist. Saudi law where it bites, including the Civil Transactions Law, the Labour Law and ZATCA.
You get the register
Traps ranked in three tiers, each with the failure it causes, the drafted redline, and the position to fall back to. Send it to the other side or work from it internally.
What a trap register looks like.
A constructed example of a fit-out subcontract review, not a client document. The clauses are the ones that keep turning up in this market.
| Tier | Clause | What it actually does | The redline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kills the job | 14.3 | Pay when paid dressed as a condition precedent. Payment never falls due if the employer never pays. The companion clause extinguishes the debt outright. | Convert to pay when certified with a longstop. Paid within 60 days of certification regardless of employer payment. |
| Kills the job | 8.5 | Seven day notice and fourteen day particulars, both condition precedent. On a night shift fit-out you generate a notifiable event most weeks. Miss one and the entitlement is extinguished. | Twenty eight days notice, forty two for particulars, and only the notice as condition precedent. |
| Erodes margin | 13.1 | Omissions for free. The joinery package can be stripped out after you priced the job on it and handed to someone cheaper, with no loss of profit. | Cap omissions at 10 percent of the price. Above that the balance is revalued. |
| Erodes margin | 14.5 | Cross-project set-off. Lets them withhold on this job for a dispute on a different job with a different entity. | Delete the affiliate and other contract wording. |
| Challenge it | 17.4 | Ten year decennial liability passed down over gypsum and joinery, which are not structural. You are buying a ten year professional indemnity tail you do not need. | Limit to elements that genuinely affect stability and safety. |
What is always in it
Ranked traps with the drafted redline. A worked money example on the single worst clause. The clauses that are correct and should stay, so you are not redlining things that will cost you goodwill. The fallback position for each fight.
What is never in it
Generic clause commentary. A marked up PDF with two hundred comments nobody reads. Anything that requires you to already understand FIDIC to use it. The report is written so a commercial manager can act on it the same afternoon.
Priced against what one missed clause costs.
Single Review
- One subcontract or main contract up to 60 pages
- Full ranked trap register
- Drafted redlines and fallback positions
- One follow up call
Commercial Cover
- Up to five contracts a month, any length
- Two working day turnaround
- Your negotiation playbook built in month one, so every review is scored against your own standard positions
- Variation and claim notices drafted on request
- Named reviewer, direct line, WhatsApp
Deal Room
- Everything in Commercial Cover
- We sit on the negotiation and mark up live
- Your full subcontract suite rewritten as issuing party, bilingual
- Flow-down matrix from main contract to every package
- Team session on the ten clauses that decide your jobs
All prices exclusive of VAT. Payment terms 50 on instruction, 50 on delivery. Kontraplus provides commercial and contractual analysis. It is not a law firm and does not provide legal representation. Where a matter needs a legal opinion we say so and we will point you to Saudi qualified counsel.
The guard is what sells it. The system is what they keep paying for.
The review is Kontra, the guard. It reads the contract and tells you what it does to you. That is what you buy today, and it works on its own.
Behind it we are building Plus, the system the contract keeps running in once it is signed. The register stops being a PDF you file and becomes the thing the job is run from.
The register
Every trap ranked, priced against your job, with the redline and the fallback. Delivered as a document in three working days.
The clocks
Every notice window in the contract, counting down against real dates. A condition precedent you can see is a condition precedent you do not miss.
The system
Variations, payment applications, certificates and retention, all running against the clauses that govern them rather than a spreadsheet beside them.
Clients on Commercial Cover go onto it first, at no extra cost while it is in pilot. Nothing you buy now is thrown away when it lands. The register is the seed the system runs on.
The ones everyone asks.
We already have a lawyer. Why this?
A lawyer tells you whether a clause is enforceable. We tell you what it costs on this job at this price with this programme, and what to write instead. Most of our clients use both, and the review makes the legal spend go further because counsel is not reading forty pages to find the five that matter.
Is three days realistic on a forty page contract?
Yes, for the register. Three working days from receipt of a complete set. If the main contract flow-down arrives late, the clock starts when it lands, and we will tell you so on day one rather than at the deadline.
Do you work for main contractors as well as subcontractors?
Both. The same reading works in reverse. For an issuing party the output is which of your clauses will not survive negotiation, which ones to trade first, and where you are carrying risk you did not intend to.
What about confidentiality?
An NDA is signed before anything is sent, on your form or ours. Documents are held for the engagement and deleted on request. We do not act for both sides of the same contract.
Arabic?
Reports are issued in English by default and bilingual on request. We read Arabic contracts and Arabic translations, including where the Arabic text prevails for registration purposes, which is a trap in itself.
Which contract forms?
FIDIC 1999 and 2017, Red, Yellow, Silver and the Subcontract form. Bespoke employer conditions built on FIDIC. Saudi government contracts under the Government Tenders and Procurement Law. Standard trade and fit-out subcontracts.
Send the contract you are worried about.
Three steps on this page. The NDA is signed before the upload opens, so nothing reaches us unprotected.