Licensed delivery partner · Dubai, UAE
There is a specific and very common problem in Dubai. A capable firm has the people, the experience and a client ready to award, and the one thing it does not have is the activity on its trade licence. The work is real. It just cannot be signed, invoiced or handed over. Red Seal Technical Services solves that by becoming the contractor of record and delivering the project properly, with your crew underneath it.
Supervised, insured, documented. This is subcontracting, not licence renting. The difference is in the line.
The situation
None of these are unusual, and none of them mean the firm is not good at the work. They mean the licence and the opportunity have drifted apart, which happens to almost every growing contractor in this market at least once.
The client wants electrical, ICT or fit-out scope included. Your licence covers the rest of it but not that, and amending a licence takes weeks you do not have before the award.
A new operation with real people and real projects, waiting on formation. Every month spent waiting is a month of paid staff and an unbilled pipeline going to someone else.
A developer, hotel or facilities client needs a licensed main contractor with insurance and an authority track record on the contract. Technically you can build it. Contractually they cannot give it to you.
How it works
Which one applies depends on whether your firm can hold a subcontract in its own name, and on how the client wants the works structured. The scope and eligibility review decides it before anything is committed.
Red Seal Technical Services holds the main contract with the client. Your company is engaged as a named subcontractor with a defined scope, programme and price.
Best when your firm is a legal entity that can contract, and simply lacks the activity.
Red Seal Technical Services holds the contract and delivers the works directly, with your people supplied to and supervised by us on site for the duration.
Best when there is no entity yet, or when the client wants one contractor and one throat to choke.
Either way
That is not a formality and it is not a fee for a signature. It is the entire reason the arrangement is lawful, insurable and acceptable to a serious client. We take the responsibility because we are actually doing the part that carries it.
Division of labour
You bring the crew, the productivity and the site knowledge. Everything below is ours, and it is the half that stops projects rather than the half that builds them.
Read this part properly
What is being described on this page is normal main contracting and subcontracting. There is a superficially similar arrangement that is not, and it is common enough in this market that you should assume anyone offering you a cheap version is offering that one.
Paying a licensed company a fee so its name goes on work it does not supervise, control or take responsibility for is concealment. The exposure lands on both sides: fines, closure of the business, cancellation of the licence, and the visa and immigration consequences that follow a cancelled licence. It also voids the insurance at the exact moment you need it, because the insurer covers the contractor who was supposed to be running the site.
So, plainly, we will not:
What we will do:
This costs more than the version being whispered about on WhatsApp. It is also the only version that is still standing in two years, and the only one a developer or hotel client will accept once their own legal team looks at it.
Six questions that tell lawful subcontracting from licence renting →
Worth reading before you sign anything with anyone, including us.
Commercials
Projects arrive in very different shapes here, so the commercial structure is agreed case by case and put in writing before anything is signed. Some partners want a straightforward management fee. Others would rather share the margin. Both work, and it is a conversation rather than a form.
Two things that do not change
Whatever structure we land on, project direct costs are treated as cost before any fee or split is calculated: supervision days, insurance extension, authority and permit fees, project-specific registration. That keeps a margin share honest rather than a way of moving risk around, and it means nothing appears later that was not named at the start.
And the way in is always the same: a fixed AED 1,500 scope and eligibility review, back in 48 hours. Your scope, drawings and the client requirement read against our licensed activities, with a straight answer on what can be delivered, which route fits and what the arrangement should look like. If it does not fit, we say so, and that is the end of the cost.
The first step
The fastest way to find out whether this works is to send the actual project rather than describe it. A scope of works, a drawing set, or even the client's enquiry email is enough to start.
Common questions
No, and the distinction is the whole point of the arrangement. Renting a licence means paying for a name on paper while an unlicensed party runs the job. That is commercial concealment, it is illegal in the UAE, and both sides carry the consequences including fines, licence cancellation and everything that follows from a cancelled licence.
Here, Red Seal Technical Services is genuinely the contractor. We hold the contract, we supervise the works, we carry the insurance and we take the liability towards the client. Your crew delivers underneath that, on paper, with a scope and a price. That is ordinary main contracting, and it is what every large contractor in this market does with its own subcontractors.
Red Seal Technical Services holds a Dubai mainland licence with eleven activities across electrical, ICT and fit-out works. That is the boundary, and every enquiry gets checked against it before anything else is discussed. If the work does not sit inside those activities the answer is no, given in the first 48 hours, and it is better to hear that from us than from an inspector.
The structure is agreed per project rather than read off a rate card, because the projects that come through this arrangement are not comparable to each other. The usual shapes are a management fee as a percentage of contract value, a fixed management fee where the contract value is uncertain, a defined profit share, or supervision at day rates for smaller scopes. Tell us which you would prefer, because plenty of partners arrive with a structure already in mind and that is a perfectly good place to start.
Two constants. Project direct costs, meaning supervision, insurance extension and authority fees, are treated as cost before any fee or split is worked out. And the first step is always the fixed AED 1,500 review, so you get a real answer before anyone commits to anything.
One word of warning that applies to whoever else you are speaking to: a very low flat percentage is not a bargain, it is a signal that nobody intends to actually supervise the job. That is the version that is unlawful, and it is your licence exposure as much as theirs.
You do. We are not looking to take your client, and the arrangement says so in writing. What we will not do is stay invisible: the client knows who the contractor of record is, because concealing that from them is precisely the thing that makes an arrangement unlawful and uninsurable.
The client pays Red Seal Technical Services against certified payment applications, because we hold the contract. You are paid from that against your subcontract, back to back with the main contract certification, less the agreed management fee. It is slower than being paid directly and it is fully auditable, which is the trade you are making.
It comes back to you through the subcontract, which is why we vet the crew and supervise the works rather than taking anyone's word for it. It is also why we would rather turn a project down at the review stage than discover the problem at commissioning. Our licence is on the line on every job, so the vetting is not a formality.
The scope and eligibility review is back in 48 hours. If it fits, papering a subcontract and mobilising is typically a week or two depending on the client's own onboarding, insurance extensions and any authority registration the project needs. It is materially faster than amending or applying for a licence, which is the alternative you are weighing it against.
That is usually the right end state and we will say so. The umbrella arrangement is a way to take the projects in front of you now without breaking anything, not a permanent dependency. When your own licence and activities are in place, the arrangement ends, and if it has gone well you have a main contractor who already knows your crew.