Structural Disputes in the GCC: The Complete Guide to Design, Failure and Responsibility

1. What a Structural Dispute Is

A structural dispute is any dispute in which the outcome depends on the design, construction or performance of a structure — the frame, slabs, foundations, transfer structures, cores, connections and supports that carry load.

They fall into two broad families.

Design disputes start on paper. A design is criticised by a checking engineer, rejected by an authority, found not to comply with the specified codes, changed late, redesigned by the contractor or value-engineered. The dispute may be about who pays for the redesign, who bears the delay, or whether the design was adequate in the first place. There may be no physical defect at all.

Failure and defect disputes start on site. A slab cracks or deflects, reinforcement corrodes, a foundation settles, a connection fails, temporary works collapse. The dispute is about what went wrong, why, who is responsible and what it will take to put right.

The two families often meet. A structural failure leads to the question whether the design was at fault; a design dispute leads to the question whether what was built is safe. The evidence for each is different — design review in one case, physical investigation in the other — and many cases need both.

In the Gulf, structural disputes are shaped by the scale and pace of development. Tall and complex buildings, long-span transfer structures, post-tensioned floors, deep basements in high groundwater, marine and coastal structures and fast-track programmes all increase the technical risk — and the stakes when something goes wrong.

2. Who Gives Structural Evidence

Structural disputes usually need more than one discipline. Knowing which expert answers which question avoids gaps and overlaps in the evidence.

Some experts cover more than one of these roles; on larger disputes they are often separate. The structural expert frequently acts as the coordinator of the technical evidence, because the structural question sits at the centre of the case.

Every one of these experts owes the same overriding duty: to assist the tribunal or court independently, not to advocate for the party that appointed them.

3. Mapping Design Responsibility

On a modern GCC project, structural design rarely sits with one party. Responsibility is typically spread across:

• The employer's design consultant — concept and scheme design, and often detailed design on traditionally procured projects.
• The engineer of record — the engineer who takes professional responsibility for the structural design for authority purposes.
• The design and build contractor and its designers — detailed design, design development and, sometimes, redesign of the employer's concept.
• Specialist subcontractors — post-tensioning, precast, structural steel connections, façade support, piling, temporary works.
• Checking engineers and peer reviewers — independent checks required by the employer, the authority or the contract.
• The authorities — approval of structural submissions, which may influence the design but rarely transfers responsibility for it.

When a structural issue arises, every one of these parties has a reason to point elsewhere. The first job of the structural engineering expert — before any calculation is checked — is to build a design responsibility map:

Whether a party is legally responsible depends on the contracts and the governing law — matters for the lawyers and the tribunal. The expert provides the factual and technical map on which that decision rests. Without it, technical arguments about adequacy have nothing to attach to.

Design and build projects

Design and build procurement is common across the region, and it creates a recurring dispute: where does the employer's design end and the contractor's begin? A contractor may argue that a problem lies in the employer's concept, which it was entitled to rely on; the employer may argue that the contractor took on responsibility for developing, checking and completing the design. The answer depends heavily on the contract wording — but the technical evidence of who actually designed what, and how the design developed, is often decisive.

4. Design Adequacy and Code Compliance

What "adequate" means

A structural design can be criticised on several distinct grounds, and it matters which one is being argued:

• Strength (ultimate limit state) — can the structure safely carry the loads it is designed for?
• Serviceability — will it deflect, crack or vibrate more than is acceptable for its use?
• Durability — will it last for its intended design life in its actual environment?
• Robustness — will it resist disproportionate collapse if something goes wrong?
• Buildability — can it practically be built as designed, with the temporary works and sequence assumed?
• Contract compliance — does it meet the employer's requirements and the specification, which may go beyond the codes?

Codes at the time

A design is judged against the codes and standards that applied at the time it was produced, as required by the contract and the authorities — not against codes published since. This matters in the GCC, where code requirements have developed rapidly and long-running projects can straddle several revisions.

The code landscape in the region is mixed. Depending on the jurisdiction, emirate and authority, a project may be designed to local building codes and authority regulations, to British Standards or Eurocodes, to American standards (such as ACI for concrete and AISC for steel), or to a combination specified in the contract. Part of the expert's job is to establish which codes actually governed the design — which is not always obvious from the documents.

Codes are a minimum

Code compliance is necessary but not always sufficient. A design can comply with the code and still fail to meet the contract — for example, where the employer's requirements set tighter deflection limits, a longer design life or a higher exposure class than the code minimum. And a design can comply with the code yet be unsuitable for the actual conditions, such as aggressive ground or a marine environment the designer did not properly account for.

Independent check calculations

Where design adequacy is disputed, the expert may carry out independent check calculations or analysis. These are not a redesign. Their purpose is to test whether the original design and its assumptions were sound — loads, load paths, analysis models, material properties and design checks. The expert should explain clearly where their model differs from the original, and why.

5. Design Development, Redesign and Value Engineering

Some of the most expensive structural disputes involve no failure at all. They are about changes to the design and who pays for them.

Design development or variation?

As a design moves from concept to construction, it develops. Member sizes change, reinforcement increases, connections are detailed. A contractor may claim that a change is a variation; an employer may say it is ordinary design development within the contractor's scope. The structural expert's evidence on what changed, why it changed, and whether the change was a foreseeable consequence of developing the original design is often central — even though the final question of whether it is a variation is one for the tribunal.

Redesign

Redesign arises when a design is rejected — by the checking engineer, the authority or the employer — or found to be deficient. The questions are whether the redesign was genuinely necessary, whether the original design was in fact inadequate, and whether the redesign went further than needed.

Value engineering

Value engineering is common on GCC projects, particularly where budgets come under pressure. A value-engineered design that later performs poorly raises difficult questions: was the value-engineered design adequate? Who proposed it, who accepted it, and on what basis? Did the saving shift risk from one party to another? The technical evidence on the adequacy of the value-engineered design, and on whether the problems flow from it, is usually decisive.

6. Structural Defects Common in the Gulf

Gulf structures are built in one of the most demanding environments in the world: high temperatures, intense solar radiation, aggressive ground and groundwater, salt-laden air and fast-track construction. These conditions shape the defects that most often reach disputes.

7. Investigating a Structural Failure

Preserve first

The single most important step in a structural failure dispute is to preserve the evidence. Once concrete is broken out, a member is propped and strengthened, or debris is cleared, the evidence of what happened may be lost permanently.

Where safety requires urgent work, it should still be preceded — wherever possible — by photographic and survey records, retention of failed components, and notice to the other parties so they can attend.

Agree a joint protocol

Where possible, inspections and testing should be carried out jointly with the opposing expert under an agreed protocol covering:

• what will be inspected and tested, and where;
• test methods, standards and laboratories;
• sampling locations and chain of custody;
• how and when results will be shared.

Results produced under an agreed protocol are rarely challenged later. Results produced by one side alone often are — and a dispute about test results can become a dispute in its own right.

Investigation and testing methods

Depending on the issues, a structural investigation may include:

Testing should be proportionate — to the issues, the sums in dispute and what the results can actually prove. A large programme of testing that does not answer the tribunal's questions wastes time and money.

Records review

Physical evidence is only half the investigation. The expert also reviews the design documents, shop drawings, pour records, cube results, inspection requests, method statements, temporary works designs, site diaries and photographs. The records often explain what the physical evidence cannot — when a prop was removed, which batch was used, whether a pour was delayed in the heat.

8. Establishing Cause

More than one cause

Most structural failures have more than one contributing cause. A design with little margin may have been adequate if built perfectly, but fails when combined with low cover or early prop removal. Good evidence identifies each contributing cause and explains its significance — so the tribunal can decide how responsibility should be allocated. Evidence that settles on a single cause too early is vulnerable in cross-examination.

The causation matrix

A practical way to present cause is a causation matrix: each possible cause, the evidence for and against it, and the expert's conclusion.

Without hindsight

Where the question is whether a designer or contractor fell short, the expert must judge their conduct on what was known, or should have been known, at the time — not on what the failure later revealed. This is particularly important in design disputes (Section 12).

9. Safety and Interim Measures

10. Remedial Schemes: Necessity, Proportion and Betterment

The choice of remedy often decides the size of the claim. The structural expert's role is to assess whether a proposed remedial scheme is:

• necessary — does it address a genuine defect?
• effective — does it address the cause, not just the symptom?
• proportionate — is it a reasonable response to the defect, or are there cheaper adequate alternatives?
• free of betterment — does it leave the owner with something better than the contract required?

Repair or replace?

Owners often want replacement; contractors often offer repair. The technical questions are whether a repair can restore the required strength, serviceability, durability and design life — and whether residual uncertainty about a repaired structure is itself a reason to replace. These are matters of engineering judgement that need clear, reasoned evidence.

11. From Crack to Cost: Working with the Quantum Expert

A structural claim becomes a money claim at the point of remedy. That is where the structural and quantum evidence must fit together exactly.

The chain the tribunal needs to follow:

1. 1

   Defect

   what is physically wrong (structural expert)
2. 2

   Cause

   why it happened, and whose scope it falls within (structural expert)
3. 3

   Remedy

   what is reasonably required to put it right (structural expert)
4. 4

   Value

   what that remedy reasonably costs, with associated losses (quantum expert)
5. 5

   Time

   whether the defect or its remedy caused delay (delay expert)

The weak points are the handovers. A quantum expert who prices the claimant's preferred remedy without a structural expert's endorsement leaves the cost exposed. A structural expert who endorses a remedy without understanding its cost implications may miss a cheaper adequate alternative. And if the structural expert accepts Option B but the quantum figure is for Option D, the claim is easy to attack.

Good practice is for the structural and quantum experts to work from one remedial scope, item by item, with each item's technical justification and cost side by side — and with alternative scopes priced where the remedy is in dispute.

12. Professional Negligence and the "Without Hindsight" Standard

Where a structural engineer's design or supervision is criticised, the dispute may become a professional liability claim. The evidence then shifts from "was the design adequate?" to "did the engineer act as a reasonably competent structural engineer would have, at the time, with the information available?"

Three points matter:

• Same discipline. The engineer's conduct should be assessed by an independent structural engineer — not by a quantity surveyor, an architect or a generalist.
• Without hindsight. Conduct is judged on what was known or should have been known at the time, not on what the failure later revealed.
• Error is not always negligence. A design can contain an error without falling below the standard of a reasonably competent engineer — and a shortfall in conduct does not always cause the loss claimed.

The legal concepts differ between jurisdictions. DIFC and ADGM proceedings draw on common-law approaches; arbitrations under civil-law governing laws may frame the question differently. Whether a consultant is legally liable is for the tribunal. The expert provides the professional practice and technical causation evidence on which that decision rests.

13. Time, Decennial Liability and the Legal Questions

Structural defects often emerge long after completion — sometimes years after the defects notification period has ended. When they do, legal questions about time and liability become central:

• The defects notification period under the contract, and the contractor's obligation and opportunity to remedy defects notified within it.
• Latent defects that emerge after completion, and when they could reasonably have been discovered.
• Decennial liability — in the UAE and several other civil-law jurisdictions in the region, the civil code imposes a special liability on contractors and designers for certain serious structural defects and collapse for a period after completion. The scope of that liability, who it applies to, how it interacts with the contract, and the effect of recent legislative changes are legal questions that require advice from a qualified local lawyer.
• Limitation periods — which differ between jurisdictions and causes of action.

The structural expert does not decide any of these questions. But the expert's evidence often supplies the facts they turn on:

• whether a defect threatens the stability or safety of the structure, or is a serviceability or durability issue;
• when the defect arose, and when it became visible or discoverable;
• whether its cause lies in design, construction or later use and maintenance;
• whose scope the defective element fell within.

Those findings should be expressed in technical terms, precisely enough that the lawyers can apply them to the legal tests that govern the case.

14. The Structural Expert's Report, Joint Statement and Hearing

When to appoint

As early as possible — and before any repairs are carried out. Early appointment allows the evidence to be preserved, a joint protocol to be agreed and the technical issues to be framed correctly in the pleadings.

The expert report

A structural expert report should:

Reports in the region are typically prepared to meet the expectations set by the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration (2020), where adopted, the CIArb Protocol for the Use of Party-Appointed Expert Witnesses in International Arbitration, the rules of the relevant institution (such as the DIAC 2022 Arbitration Rules), and the expert evidence requirements of the DIFC Courts, ADGM Courts, QICDRC and BICC.

Making engineering understandable

Tribunals are rarely made up of engineers. The most persuasive structural evidence explains complex behaviour simply: annotated photographs, crack maps, simple load-path diagrams, before-and-after sections and, where helpful, 3D models or animations of a failure sequence. Clarity is not dumbing down; it is what lets the tribunal test the reasoning.

Joint meetings and the hearing

Tribunals commonly direct the experts to meet and produce a joint statement of agreed and disagreed issues. In structural disputes, the joint statement is often organised by defect or by element, with the cause, responsibility and remedy for each. At the hearing, expert conferencing ("hot-tubbing") is increasingly used, and is well suited to technical issues where the experts can test each other's reasoning in front of the tribunal.

15. Common Mistakes in Structural Disputes

16. What to Do Now