Open any fit-out quote and you will see a list of what you are getting. Reception counter, wall panelling, glazed partitions, vanity units. Very few of them tell you who makes it. Clients ask about the price per square foot. They ask about the programme, and whether we have worked in their building before. Hardly anyone asks where the joinery is made. That is the answer that decides when they get their keys.
Most fit-out companies in Dubai do not make anything
This surprises people, but it should not. The whole trade is built this way and always has been. A main contractor wins the job and draws the space. Then they start placing orders. Joinery goes out to a factory somewhere. Loose furniture comes from a supplier. Aluminium goes to a fabricator. The contractor manages all of it, but the making happens in other people’s workshops.
So the company on your contract is usually a customer of the firms that really build your interior. Your handover date depends on where that company sits in a production queue you never get to see.
Joinery is the longest lead item on most jobs
Joinery is most of what makes a space look finished. It is also made to order, and that takes time nobody can speed up.
A reception counter is built to your curve. Wall panelling is cut to your ceiling height. A wardrobe is made for your wall and will not fit anyone else’s, which is the whole point of it. So you cannot order this in the week you want it. Shop drawings have to be made and approved. The factory has to find a slot. Only then does anyone start cutting.
On most jobs joinery sits on the critical path. Everything else waits behind it. Your fit-out date is really your joinery date under another name.
When the factory runs late, your contractor can only pass the news on. They are one of several customers ringing that week, and they have no more pull than their last invoice bought them.
What a late factory costs you in Dubai right now
Look at what CBRE reported for the second quarter of 2026. Average Dubai office rents were up 13 per cent on the year. Prime rents were up 16 per cent. Around 94 per cent of space was taken, and in the better areas offices are pre-leased before the building is even finished.
When that little is free, you cannot shop around. You take what you can get when you can get it, and your rent starts on the landlord’s date, not on the day you open.
So the fit-out period is rent on an empty unit. Every week the joinery is late is another week of it, at a price that has gone up two years running.
Three questions to ask before you sign
None of these are rude. A company that makes its own joinery will be happy you asked.
- Do you make the joinery yourself or buy it in? If they buy it, ask which factory, and whether that factory has other jobs running inside your delivery window.
- Who employs the site team? There is a real difference between a crew on your contractor’s payroll and labour brought in by the week. You see it the day the programme starts slipping.
- If the joinery is late, who tells me, and what can you do about it? The answer tells you if they can step in or only pass on bad news.
Having our own factory does not make us safe
Worth saying plainly, since everything above sounds good for us. A well run supply chain beats a badly run factory. A company with its own workshop can still take on too much work, or miss a shop drawing deadline. Being nearby is not the point either. Our own factories are in Ethiopia, Turkey and Tanzania, not down the road in Dubai, and plenty of very good joinery arrives here from factories the contractor does not own.
The question is whether the company carrying your handover date also controls the long lead item that sets it. If they are the same company, a problem gets sorted inside one business. If they are two companies, it gets argued out between them, and you are not in the room.
That is how turnkey interior design in Dubai actually works, and the word itself never tells you any of it. Signing one contract only helps if that signature reaches all the way down to the long lead items.
Ask the same question twice
Ask who signs the handover certificate. Then ask who made the joinery.
If both answers are the same company, your contract is doing what you think it is doing. If they are two different companies, that is not always a problem. But you want to know on the day you sign, not in the week you are waiting for a delivery.
Ahmed Dandari works with Spazio Interior Decoration LLC, a Dubai design and fit-out company started in 2008. Spazio has more than 150 of its own staff across six countries and makes its own joinery, furniture and aluminium in its own factories in Ethiopia, Turkey and Tanzania. More at spazio.ae. Rent and occupancy figures are from CBRE’s UAE Real Estate Market Review for the second quarter of 2026.
Read Also: FAB Bank Balance Enquiry
