Run a contract on Hijri and Gregorian dates

Set the project calendar to the Saudi working week, Sunday through Thursday with Friday and Saturday as the weekend, and record the normal working day at the Labour Law maximum of eight hours, or forty eight hours in the week, whichever standard the contract of employment adopts.

Why: A programme built on a Monday to Friday default is wrong twice a week, every week, and the error compounds silently into every float calculation and every completion date the programme produces. It also puts planned work on Fridays, which is the day it will not happen, so the first progress report reads as a delay that never occurred.

Load the public holidays for the programme years ahead. Founding Day on 22 February and National Day on 23 September are fixed Gregorian dates. Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are Hijri and shift about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year, and the exact days off are confirmed close to the time, so plan the window and confirm the days rather than the other way round.

Why: A concrete pour or a shutdown planned into an Eid week is not a scheduling inconvenience, it is a crew that is not in the country. Because the Eids move, a programme copied from a job that ran two years earlier puts them in the wrong place, and the mistake is invisible until the week arrives.

Read the contract for how the period of performance is expressed, in Hijri months, in Gregorian months or in days, note which it is on the contract record, and compute the completion date from the commencement date on that basis. Show the same date in the other calendar beside it, marked as the conversion rather than as the term.

Why: This is where the disputes come from. Eighteen Hijri months and eighteen Gregorian months are more than a fortnight apart, and on a contract with liquidated damages a fortnight is a number. Naming the calendar the contract chose, once, means the completion date is computed rather than negotiated, and the conversion stays visible as a convenience for the reader instead of quietly becoming the obligation.

Set the crews to the Ramadan working day and replan the month's output on it. Article 98 of the Labour Law reduces actual working hours during Ramadan for Muslim workers to six a day, or thirty six a week, against the normal eight and forty eight, and most sites apply the reduced day to everyone rather than run two rotas.

Why: A quarter of the working hours disappears for a month, and it is a statutory reduction rather than a productivity dip, so it belongs in the plan rather than in the excuses. A programme that carries eight hour days through Ramadan is not optimistic, it is arithmetically impossible, and the recovery plan written in the following month is paying for a decision made a year earlier.

Put the guarantees, the insurances, the classification and commercial registration certificates, the municipal permits and the residence permits of the staff on one register, each with its expiry and a note saying whether that expiry was written in Hijri or in Gregorian, and set the reminder far enough ahead to renew rather than to react.

Why: Almost every instrument on that list has teeth and none of them warn you. A residence permit that lapses stops a man working, a lapsed guarantee can cost the contract, and a bank guarantee written for twelve Hijri months expires eleven days before the anniversary somebody has in their diary. The register is not paperwork, it is the only place the two calendars are reconciled once instead of forty times.

When an extension of time is claimed, count the delay in working days on the project calendar, with the weekends, the national days and the Eid closures the calendar already holds, and attach the diary entries and correspondence that show what happened on each of them.

Why: A claim counted in calendar days and answered in working days is two parties disagreeing about arithmetic while believing they disagree about the facts. Counting on the calendar both signed up to removes that argument entirely and leaves the real one, which is whether the event was the employer's risk.

Publish the period report with the contract completion date, the forecast completion and the remaining float, each shown in the calendar the contract uses, and the conversion given alongside where the audience needs it.

Why: A monthly report is where a date error gets ratified. Print the completion date in one calendar for a year and both parties stop checking it, and the correction, when it comes, arrives with a claim attached. Showing the contract calendar first and the conversion second keeps the obligation and the convenience clearly apart.