FIDIC IPCs in the UAE β why three weeks is too long and how to cut it to four days
What an Interim Payment Certificate actually contains, where the time goes, and how to compress the cycle without skipping FIDIC clauses.
On most UAE projects, the IPC cycle eats three weeks. The contractor submits a Word document with screenshots on day one, the consultant spends a week chasing missing evidence, the engineer signs on day fifteen, the owner approves on day twenty-one, payment lands on day thirty-five.
The work was done in the first week. The other four weeks are friction.
What the IPC actually contains
A FIDIC Red Book IPC has five layers:
- Measured progress against priced BOQ items.
- Materials on site valued under FIDIC sub-clause 14.5.
- Plant on site (mobilisation, equipment), valued separately.
- Adjustments β retention (typically 5%), mobilisation advance recovery, contra charges, taxes.
- Supporting evidence β daily reports, photos, supplier invoices, MIR/RFI references.
Each of those layers has rules. Each rule is a place the IPC can be delayed if the evidence isn't traceable.
Where the three weeks go
In the typical workflow, layers 1β3 live in three different systems (or three different spreadsheets). Layer 4 is calculated by hand at IPC preparation time. Layer 5 sits across email, WhatsApp, and a foreman's notebook.
The contractor's PM spends days reconciling the spreadsheets. The consultant's QS spends days cross-checking the reconciliation. Half the back-and-forth is "where's the evidence for line 437?" β a question that shouldn't exist if the evidence was attached when the work was approved.
How to compress to four days
The structural fix is to merge the five layers into one system, with evidence attached at source:
- Progress approvals create the IPC line, with photo and signed report attached.
- Materials approval creates the materials-on-site line, with supplier invoice and MIR attached.
- Mobilisation advance recovery is a contract setting, not a manual calculation.
- Retention and adjustments are formulas on the project, not Excel formulas in a workbook.
- The IPC PDF generates by aggregating the lines β there's no "preparation" step.
When Aletlala General Contracting moved from email + Word + Excel to ORKSTRA on its mosque project (PRJ-2026-001 in Abu Dhabi), the IPC cycle dropped from 21 days to 4. The consultant's review went from one week to six hours, because every line had its evidence attached on the same screen.
What this means for cash flow
A 17-day shorter cycle on a 24-month, AED 80M contract β at monthly IPCs β recovers roughly AED 600,000 in working-capital cost over the project lifetime. That's not a marketing number; it's the gap between the bank overdraft you needed under Word + Excel and the one you actually use under ORKSTRA.
If your IPCs are running >7 days, the system is wrong, not the people. Book a 20-minute demo and we'll walk through your last IPC together.