Can I work under another company's trade licence in Dubai?

It depends entirely on which of two very different arrangements you mean. Renting a licence, meaning paying a licensed company a fee so its name appears on work it does not supervise or control, is commercial concealment and is unlawful in the UAE. Subcontracting, meaning the licensed company genuinely holds the contract, supervises the works, carries the insurance and takes the liability while your people deliver underneath it, is ordinary construction practice and is entirely legal. The test is not what the arrangement is called. It is whether the licensed party actually controls and is answerable for the work.

What is commercial concealment?

Broadly, commercial concealment is enabling someone to carry on a business activity they are not licensed for, by using your licence, name or legal status to cover it. The licensed party fronts the business, the unlicensed party actually runs it. UAE law treats this as an offence for both sides, with consequences that can include fines, closure of the business and cancellation of the licence, which in turn affects the visas that depend on that licence. Specific penalties change over time, so take your own current legal advice rather than relying on a summary.

How do I tell licence renting from legitimate subcontracting?

Ask who signs the contract with the client, who supervises the works on site, whose insurance responds if something goes wrong, who deals with the authorities, who issues the handover documentation, and whether the client knows who the contractor of record is. In legitimate subcontracting the licensed party answers yes to all of these because it genuinely does them. In licence renting the licensed party does none of them and is paid a percentage anyway. A fee that looks unusually cheap is the clearest signal, because nobody can afford to genuinely supervise a project for three percent.

What happens if my licence does not cover the activity a client wants?

There are three lawful routes. Amend your licence to add the activity, which is the right long term answer but takes time you may not have before an award. Decline the scope and keep the relationship. Or subcontract properly under a licensed main contractor, who holds the contract and supervises while your crew delivers. What is not a route is delivering the work anyway and hoping the question is not asked, because the question is asked at authority inspection and at handover, which is the worst possible moment.

Does the client have to know about the arrangement?

Yes. Concealing the identity of the contractor of record from the client is close to the definition of the problem. In a legitimate arrangement the client contracts with the licensed entity knowingly, and the subcontractor is disclosed in the ordinary way. Any arrangement that depends on the client not finding out is not one to be in.

Can You Work Under Another Company's Trade Licence in Dubai?

Why this comes up

Capability and permission drift apart

This is not a UAE quirk, it happens to growing construction businesses everywhere. A firm gets good at something adjacent to what it was set up to do. Clients start asking for it, because the client wants one company to handle the whole job rather than three. Meanwhile the licence still describes the business as it was when it was registered, and licence amendments move at their own pace regardless of when the award lands.

So a real, capable company ends up with real work it cannot sign for. That is an administrative gap, not a character flaw, and there are lawful ways through it. The trouble is that the unlawful way is the one that gets offered first, because it is the easiest to sell.

It is worth knowing what the paperwork is protecting you from. In Arcadis's 2025 Global Construction Disputes Report, the leading cause of disputes in North America for the third year running was errors or omissions in contract documents, with parties failing to fully understand or comply with their contractual obligations in second place. The average dispute value there reached 60.1 million US dollars, up from 43.0 million in 2023. Disputes are not usually caused by bad building. They are caused by unclear paper.

The useful part

Six questions that tell you which one you are being offered

Ask these of anyone proposing to put you under their licence. You are not being difficult. You are checking whether the thing you are about to sign is the lawful version, and a serious counterparty will be glad you asked.

Ask them

What the answer should be

1. Who signs the contract with the client?

They do, in their own name, as contractor of record. If the answer is that you sign and they just lend the name, stop there.

2. Who supervises the works on site?

They do, with a named, qualified person who actually attends. If nobody from their side ever visits, there is no supervision, whatever the contract says.

3. Whose insurance responds if something goes wrong?

Theirs, in the name of the contracting entity. An insurer covers the contractor who was supposed to be running the site. If that was fiction, so is the cover.

4. Who deals with the authorities?

They do, on their licence, for permits, approvals and inspections. This is where the arrangement gets tested in practice.

5. Who issues the testing and handover documentation?

They do, and they can only do that honestly if they inspected the work. Signing a handover pack for works you never saw is the whole problem in one document.

6. Does the client know who the contractor of record is?

Yes, openly. Any arrangement that depends on the client not finding out is not one to be in.

The price tells you before the answers do

Genuine contractor of record work carries real cost: a qualified person attending site, insurance that actually responds, authority submissions, quality records, handover documentation, and the liability sitting on someone else's licence for the life of the defects period.

Nobody can do all of that for a token percentage. So an unusually cheap quote is not a bargain, it is a statement of intent: they are not planning to do any of it. Which means:

The supervision is not happening, so quality is unmanaged
The insurance will likely not respond, because the declared contractor was not running the site
The exposure is yours as much as theirs, and it does not end when the project does

If your licence does not cover the scope

Three lawful routes, and one that is not

Amend the licence. Add the activity. This is the right long term answer and usually the cheapest, and the only problem with it is timing, because amendments do not move at the speed of an award.

Decline the scope. Underrated. Telling a client honestly that a part of the job is outside what you are licensed for, and helping them find someone for it, costs you one package and often wins you the relationship.

Subcontract properly. A licensed main contractor holds the contract and supervises, your crew delivers underneath it, and everything is papered. Ordinary practice, used by large contractors continuously.

The one that is not a route: doing the work anyway and hoping nobody asks. The question does get asked, at authority inspection and at handover, which is the most expensive possible moment to discover the answer.

If you want the third route

Red Seal Technical does this as contractor of record.

A Dubai mainland licence with eleven activities across electrical, ICT and fit-out works, supervision by a Red Seal Class A Master Electrician and BICSI RCDD, insurance, the authority interface and the handover pack. Your crew delivers underneath it, on paper. The first step is a fixed review that tells you inside 48 hours whether your scope fits, and says no if it does not.

How the arrangement works Ask about your situation

Common questions

More on this

What exactly is commercial concealment?

Broadly, it is enabling someone to carry on a business activity they are not licensed for by using your licence, name or legal status to cover it. The licensed party fronts, the unlicensed party actually runs the business. UAE law treats it as an offence on both sides, and the consequences can include fines, closure of the business and cancellation of the licence, which then affects every visa depending on that licence.

Specific penalties and definitions change over time. Treat this page as orientation, not as legal advice, and take current advice on your own structure before you commit to anything.

Is a joint venture or profit share the same problem?

Not inherently. What makes an arrangement lawful is not how the money is split, it is whether the licensed party genuinely holds and controls the work. A properly constituted joint venture where the licensed party really is contracting, supervising and carrying liability is a legitimate structure, and a fixed fee arrangement where it does none of those things is not, however conventional the fee looks.

Judge the arrangement on control and responsibility, not on the shape of the payment.

My client suggested it. Does that make it safer?

No, and it is worth being clear-eyed about why. If it goes wrong, the licence that gets cancelled is the licensed party's, and the company that cannot invoice is yours. The client's exposure in that scenario is the smallest of the three. A client suggesting a shortcut is not the client accepting the risk of it.

We are mid-project and this describes our arrangement. What now?

Take proper legal advice quickly, because the options narrow as the project progresses and they narrow sharply at handover. In many cases an arrangement can be regularised while the works are still running: the contract restructured, supervision genuinely put in place, insurance corrected and the client informed. That is a much better conversation to have now than during an authority inspection.

Who wrote this?

Karl Nylund, who runs Red Seal Technical Services in Dubai and has spent thirty five years in electrical and ICT construction, from the tools through to senior project manager, on both the contractor and consultant sides.

Worth stating the obvious interest: Red Seal Technical offers the lawful version of this arrangement, so it benefits if you choose that route. The page is still accurate, and the six questions above work just as well when you point them at us.