Is Engineering Supervision Mandatory in Saudi Arabia? And How to Appoint an Office on Balady

Yes. Engineering supervision is mandatory for any building that is issued a permit in Saudi Arabia. Balady, the Ministry of Municipalities and Housing’s e-services platform where permits are issued, requires a contract with a supervising engineering office and a contractor before it issues a building permit. The Saudi Building Code Implementation Law requires design, supervision and construction to be carried out under contracts with specialists who hold practising licences.

Landowners in Al Khobar and Dammam ask us this often: is supervision really a legal requirement, or an optional extra you can skip to save money? The short answer is that it is a legal requirement, not an option.

What exactly does Saudi law require?

Three provisions settle the question:

Source	What it requires
Saudi Building Code Implementation Law, Article 7	Design, supervision and construction under contracts with specialists who hold practising licences
Balady building permit service requirements	A contract with a supervising engineering office and a building contractor, alongside the design office contract
Balady occupancy certificate service	For new applications, the certificate is issued through the supervising office after the construction reports are submitted

So the supervising office is present at the start of the route (no permit unless it is linked to the application) and at the end (no occupancy certificate without its reports). The occupancy certificate, which most people call the building completion certificate, is not a formality. The law does not allow a building to be occupied without it, and treats it as a basic condition for full connection of the electricity supply.

Engineering offices are also classified by the Ministry of Municipalities and Housing, and the classification determines which kinds of project an office may work on. When you choose an office, check its classification through Balady’s engineering office inquiry service, and its licensing with the Saudi Council of Engineers, the professional body where engineers’ accreditation can be verified.

The competent authority depends on the location. Projects in Jubail Industrial City, for example, come under the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, with requirements and a permit route that differ from the municipal one. Confirm the authority for your plot before taking any step.

Why does the law require supervision at all?

For a practical reason: construction mistakes only show after they have been covered up.

A waterproofing error under the tiles shows after the first rainy season. A wrong roof slope shows after the finishes. Missing reinforcing steel never shows, until it does.

Supervision is the only window in which these mistakes can be caught while they can still be fixed at a reasonable cost. Once the concrete is poured and the work covered, putting them right costs many times what preventing them would have.

That is why the law ties liability to supervision. Following the amendment to Article 8, the designer supervising construction and the contractor are jointly liable to the owner for collapse and for defects that threaten the building’s soundness and safety, including latent (hidden) defects, for a period set by the regulations.

In a coastal climate like Al Khobar and Dammam this matters even more. Humidity and salt mean that waterproofing mistakes and poorly treated exposed steel turn into problems faster than they do in dry inland areas.

Who chooses the supervising office: the owner or the contractor?

You do, not the contractor. The law itself defines the supervisor as the licensed party the owner engages to carry out supervision.

The supervising office works for you, and its job is to check that the contractor follows the drawings and specifications. When the office is nominated by the contractor or tied to it, that job disappears. Nobody supervises themselves impartially.

This is one of the points where we most often see owners go wrong to save time.

How do you link an engineering office to your permit application on Balady?

Linking is a simple online procedure, but many people get stuck because every link involves two parties:

1. Sign in to your Balady account through Nafath, the national single sign-on service.
2. Start the building permit application for your plot.
3. Authorise the design engineering office by searching for its name or number.
4. The design office accepts the authorisation from its own account, then prepares the drawings and submits the file.
5. The design office names the supervising office and the contractor on the application, as you have agreed with them.
6. The supervising office and the contractor accept the link, each from its own account. The step is not complete until they do.
7. Track the application status until both offices and the contractor appear linked to your project.

The step most often forgotten is acceptance. A link is not complete when it is sent, only when the other party accepts it from its account. If it is slow to appear, contact the office or the contractor to confirm they have accepted. For the full sequence from survey to permit, see our guide to getting a building permit through Balady.

What should an engineering supervision contract include?

The model contract for the supervising office is published on Balady’s building permit requirements page (in Arabic). Before you sign, ask for the contract to state explicitly:

• The number of site visits and the stages covered, not a bare percentage or “periodic visits” without detail.
• How visits are documented: a written report with photos after each visit.
• Responsibility for checking materials before they are used, not after.
• A commitment to upload construction reports to the platform until the occupancy certificate is issued.

A contract that simply says “supervision of the project” without these items is the most common source of disputes between owners and offices. The number and scope of visits are also what drive the fee. Supervision is a separate budget line from the contractor’s price, as our guide to villa construction costs in Al Khobar and Dammam explains.

The bottom line

Engineering supervision is a legal requirement: no permit without a supervising office linked to the application, and no occupancy certificate without its reports. Its real value, though, is that it is the only chance to catch construction mistakes while they can still be fixed. Choose an office that is independent of the contractor, check its classification and licensing, and ask for a contract that sets out the number of visits and the deliverables clearly.

If you are planning a project in Al Khobar or nearby, see how we work as an engineering office in Al Khobar, or contact us for a supervision quote.