Seeing Payment Behaviors Early Helps Contractors Protect Projects And Partnerships.
Most contractors in the Gulf will never admit this publicly: “We’re keeping the project alive… by funding everyone else.” On paper, contracts look balanced. In reality, payment cycles stretching 90 days or more turn service providers into unintended lenders. Materials are purchased, scaffolding rises, crews are deployed while invoices sit in approval queues, waiting for signatures that never seem to come.
Ash T. Arshad, General Manager at RGS, knows this cycle well. “We start projects in good faith,” he says. “But rarely does the client actually keep to payment terms.”
Instead of stopping work, RGS does what most responsible contractors do: they keep projects running unless the situation becomes extreme. They scale manpower as needed, negotiate smaller and more frequent payment plans when clients struggle, and quietly absorb the impact on their own working capital.
The Unspoken Reality on Site
Picture a typical project. Scaffolding rises on schedule. Safety briefings are done. Crews rotate in the heat. Milestones are being hit. The client commends the speed and precision.
But behind the scenes, the finance team sees a different narrative, Day 60. Day 75. Day 90. The invoice is “in process.” Someone is still “chasing approvals.” Salaries, suppliers and logistics continue to be paid by RGS because stopping would damage the client, the project, and the team on the ground.
“We never willingly disrupt a project — that usually has bigger consequences for everyone,” Ash explains. “But there comes a point where you realize you’re carrying risk that was never meant to be yours.”
Many contractors simply absorb the loss and move on. RGS chose a different path.
What Contractors Don’t Say Out Loud
In Gulf construction, certain truths stay unspoken:
- Delayed payments aren’t the exception — they’re built into the system.
- Many companies operate under “pay when paid,” meaning RGS gets paid only after the client does.
- Suppliers are often pushed into discounts to collect overdue cash, eroding already tight margins.
These behaviors are so common that many forget how dangerous they are.
“We were effectively bankrolling huge parts of our clients’ projects,” Ash recalls. “That’s not a partnership. That’s absorbing risk other people created.”
The consequences go beyond finances. Slow payments chip away at trust and turn every progress meeting into a delicate dance between technical updates and unspoken financial tension.
Learning to Read the Red Flags Early
RGS decided that if the industry wanted to normalize these issues, they would not.
Through its B4B — Business for Business approach, RGS introduced something unusual for the sector:
- Creating customer profiles to identify chronic late payers, habitual disputers, and clients with genuine cash strain.
- Studying payment patterns across sectors and projects.
- Asking a crucial early question: “Are we working with you — or funding you?”
Internally, the company began mapping critical risks: late payments, bad debt, disputes, over-reliance on major clients, and manual billing errors. They traced root causes to issues like weak client onboarding, unclear contractual terms, and ineffective dispute resolution.
Payment behavior soon became more than a finance metric, it became a measure of relationship health.
Choosing Partnership Over Pretence
The B4B approach hasn’t made RGS harsh or transactional. In fact, it’s made them more transparent.
- They discuss cash-flow realities before the first scaffold goes up.
- They prioritize milestone-based billing over vague lump-sum arrangements.
- When clients face real pressure, they co-create structured payment plans instead of resorting to last-minute discounting.
“For us, B4B is simple,” Ash says. “If we’re sharing risk, we should also share honesty. Late payments can happen, pretending they don’t is what destroys trust.”
That clarity now guides key decisions: which projects they accept, which ones they decline, and where stronger terms are required because past behavior speaks for itself.
The Question Few Are Brave Enough to Ask
Most contractors focus on the technical requirements: safety, speed, manpower, scope. Few stop to ask? “If we keep absorbing everyone else’s delays, how long before we become the risk?” RGS asked that question early and acted on the answer.
The companies that remain resilient won’t be the ones boasting loudly about growth. They’ll be the ones quietly refusing to build on foundations of delayed payments and silent losses.
And the next time a project is celebrated, RGS hopes the industry recognizes something deeper. Not only the quality of the structure but the fairness with which every contributor was treated.
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