Facility Management Companies in Saudi Arabia: What the Contract Should Cover, and How to Choose One
What an FM contract in Saudi Arabia should specify, the Civil Defense and Saudization rules inside the scope, where Resolution 60339 draws its line, and ten questions to put to any provider before you sign.
A facility management company in Saudi Arabia takes responsibility for keeping a building or site working — hard services such as HVAC, electrical, plumbing and fire and life safety systems, and soft services such as cleaning, hospitality, landscaping, waste and pest control — under a written scope, with its own employees under its own supervision, accountable for what it delivers. That description is also a legal test. Since 26 January 2026, Ministerial Resolution 60339 of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) has treated such a contract as service outsourcing, and placing a worker at the client's establishment under the client's supervision as internal labour outsourcing — a separately licensed activity documented on Ajeer. The work inside the scope has its own regulators too: Civil Defense for fire systems, MHRSD's localisation decisions for jobs such as receptionist and storekeeper, and, in Jubail and Ras Al Khair, the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu.
This page sets out what an FM contract should specify, the rules inside the scope, where Resolution 60339 draws its line, and the questions whose answers differ from one provider to the next.
It does not give you a savings figure or a market size. No official source has measured what Saudi companies save by outsourcing facility management, and the market sizes in circulation come from commercial research firms, not from any authority. Price the work against what running the building costs you now.
Key Takeaways
- An FM contract is a scope: the asset list, maintenance frequencies, response priorities, cleaning standards and exclusions are what you are buying, however the price is built.
- Who directs the work day to day decides the legal category. Under Resolution 60339, a provider supervising its own people against a defined scope is service outsourcing; people who remain another company's employees but work under your supervision are internal labour outsourcing — separately licensed, documented on Ajeer, and carrying obligations for you as the receiving company.
- Some jobs inside FM scopes are now Saudi-only. Storekeeper has been 100% Saudi since 5 April 2026; receptionist, enquiries clerk and administrative assistant since 4 October 2026. The decision binds the provider on its own file.
- Fire systems are a licensing matter. Civil Defense requires periodic maintenance by a specialised body or an approved contractor, and a valid safety-systems maintenance contract is one of the documents for a facility's safety licence.
- The riskiest month is the first: an asset survey, a handover of records and subcontracts, and a site-team transfer that the new contractor's Nitaqat band can block.
What a facility management contract has to specify
Lists of facility management companies describe the service as departments. A buyer is better served reading it as the things the contract has to pin down, because the scope is the only thing a provider can be held to.
| Service line | What sits in it | What the scope should state |
|---|---|---|
| HVAC | Chillers, air handling units, split and package units | Every unit on the asset list; frequency per asset class; the coil-cleaning cycle |
| Electrical, plumbing and drainage | LV distribution, lighting, generators, UPS; water systems, pumps, tanks | Inspection and load-testing intervals; tank cleaning and disinfection |
| Fire and life safety | Detection, alarm, suppression and emergency systems | Who maintains them, and on what approval; who holds the test records |
| Building management system | Operation and monitoring, where installed | Whether the provider operates it or only responds to its alarms |
| Cleaning | Daily, periodic and deep cleaning | A standard and frequency per area type; how it is audited |
| Landscaping, waste and pest control | Grounds and irrigation; disposal; scheduled treatment | Irrigation as a maintained asset; the disposal route; summer working hours |
| Hospitality | Reception, office support, catering support | Which roles are on the localisation lists |
Hard services carry the statutory obligations and the expensive failures; soft services carry the occupant's view of the building and, increasingly, the localisation rules. Integrated facility management (IFM) puts both under one contract, one service-level framework and one accountable manager. Its case is rarely price: it removes the gaps between single-service vendors' scopes, where problems usually sit, and generally earns its place once a site runs three or more separate service contracts.
Every scope also needs an exclusions list. In an annual maintenance contract (AMC) the usual exclusions are major component replacement, consumables beyond an agreed allowance, damage from misuse and defects found at survey, and that list is where disputes start. Frequencies should come from the site: on the Gulf coast, humidity binds shamal dust onto condenser coils and salt attacks external plant, so coil cleaning is a wet chemical task on a defined cycle that an inland Riyadh schedule would not include.
Planned maintenance, reactive work and the asset register
| Work | What triggers it | What it is measured on |
|---|---|---|
| Planned preventive maintenance (PPM) | A schedule built per asset from its requirements and criticality | Tasks completed against tasks due |
| Reactive work | A fault or a request | Response and rectification times by priority, set in the contract |
| Statutory and life-safety work | The site's licences and the regulator's requirements | Records an inspector will accept |
| Soft services | A frequency and a standard per area | Audits against the written standard |
All of it rests on the asset register: what the site has, its condition, and what each item costs you when it fails. The PPM schedule is built from it, and capital replacement is forecast from it rather than discovered. The test of planned maintenance is that reactive callouts fall; if they are flat after a full cycle, the schedule is generating activity, not reliability.
Response times belong in the contract, measured and reported; one quoted before the scope, coverage hours and asset criticality are agreed is not a commitment. The register and the service history should be yours at the end, because they are what counts when equipment is under warranty or the cause of a failure is disputed.
How facility management contracts are priced
| Basis | What it buys | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed monthly fee for a defined scope | PPM, soft-service frequencies, and reactive work and consumables within an agreed allowance | A vague scope — the argument is always about what sits inside the fee |
| Schedule of rates | Reactive and out-of-scope work, priced per task or item | Everything drifting "out of scope" |
| Annual maintenance contract | Scheduled maintenance of named assets for a fixed annual fee | The exclusions list |
| Base fee with agreed uplift windows | Pre-agreed uplifts for known peaks, such as a plant shutdown that fills canteens and accommodation | Peaks raised as variations mid-event |
| Per person per month | Named roles or posts staffed for a period, against stated duties | Duties left undefined, or nothing saying who directs the people day to day |
A single contract can combine several of these bases, and none of them decides the legal category by itself: under Resolution 60339, what separates service outsourcing from internal labour outsourcing is supervision — who directs the people day to day — together with what the provider is obliged to deliver. Whichever basis a line uses, the contract should state both.
The rules that sit inside an FM scope
| Rule | What it requires | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Fire-fighting and alarm systems | Regular periodic maintenance by a specialised body or an approved contractor; fixed automatic units by an approved maintenance contractor | Civil Defense |
| The facility's safety licence | Issued through the Salamah portal; the documents include a valid safety-systems maintenance contract, a lift maintenance contract where there are lifts, and insurance | Civil Defense |
| Localised professions | Storekeeper 100% Saudi since 5 April 2026; receptionist and administrative assistant since 4 October 2026; the full list for building services is below | MHRSD Decision 132249 |
| Midday outdoor work | No work in direct sun from 12:00 to 15:00 between 15 June and 15 September | MHRSD, Ministerial Decision 3337 of 1435H |
| Jubail and Ras Al Khair | The facility is responsible for its contractors' violations, arising from their contract, that may affect the environment or public health | Royal Commission Environmental Regulations 2025, Volume III, s. 2.3.2 |
Two of those rows change how an FM contract is written. The fire-systems line has to name who does the work and on what approval — Civil Defense's text says a specialised body or an approved contractor — whether the FM provider holds that standing itself or subcontracts. And because the maintenance contract is one of the documents behind the facility's safety licence, a change of contractor should never leave the facility without one: the new contract should be signed before the old one ends, and the test records should pass across with it.
The jobs that are now Saudi-only
Of the 69 professions Decision 132249 placed at 100% Saudization, these are the ones that turn up in building and site services, whoever employs them:
| Profession | Code | 100% Saudi from |
|---|---|---|
| Security guard | 541402 | 5 April 2026 |
| Storekeeper | 432101 | 5 April 2026 |
| Security camera monitor | 541401 | 4 October 2026 |
| Receptionist | 422601 | 4 October 2026 |
| Enquiries clerk | 422501 | 4 October 2026 |
| Stock movement clerk | 432103 | 4 October 2026 |
| Administrative assistant | 412001 | 4 October 2026 |
The decision binds every private establishment with one worker or more in a listed profession, including the FM provider: a proposal that staffs reception with non-Saudi employees after 4 October proposes a breach on the provider's own file. What it does not settle is your side. The procedural guide penalises an establishment that assigns a localised profession's tasks to a non-Saudi "directly or indirectly", without defining the second word, so whether a particular service contract falls inside that clause is a question for legal advice. The October 2026 Saudization guide has the full list.
Nor does outsourcing raise your Nitaqat band: people who remain another company's employees are not counted as yours. The narrow exceptions prove the default: Qiwa counts Saudis leased from a licensed recruitment company (category A), an employment company or a Saudi secondment provider at the hiring establishment, capped at 10% of its Saudi employees, and Ajeer runs a separate scheme built to count a Saudi guard employed by a contracted security company at the beneficiary. Neither is facility management bought as a scope.
Summer, and the industrial cities
The midday ban decides when landscaping, external cleaning, roof plant and open car-park work can happen for three months of the year; row 5 of Resolution 112377 fines working someone in exposed sun without the required precautions at SAR 1,000 per worker. In Jubail Industrial City and Ras Al Khair, the Royal Commission rule turns an FM contractor's waste segregation and disposal route into the plant operator's own compliance question, so it belongs in the scope. Access there runs through Royal Commission procedures and each plant's gate rules; in Dammam Second Industrial City, one of MODON's industrial cities, through the estate's permit and gate-pass process on top of the tenant's own HSE regime. On both, inductions and permits set the start date.
How to choose a facility management company in Saudi Arabia: ten questions
Every FM provider lists quality, safety, technology and responsiveness. Those are what the service is supposed to be. These are the questions whose answers differ.
- Who will supervise the people on our site, and what is your contract obliged to deliver? The answer you want is the provider, and a defined scope against measured standards. If your supervisor will direct them, you are in the second column of the table in the next section.
- How is each line priced, and what does each price buy? Whether a line is a fixed fee for a scope, a schedule of rates or a rate per person per month, it should state the duties it covers and who directs the people on it day to day. The pricing basis does not decide the legal category by itself; under Resolution 60339, supervision is what separates service outsourcing from internal labour outsourcing. Where your own staff will direct people who remain the provider's employees, the arrangement has to be documented on Ajeer and carries obligations for you as the receiving company — employing another establishment's worker without an Ajeer notice is row 53 of Resolution 112377, at SAR 10,000 to 20,000 per case.
- Which of your people on our site need Ajeer permits? Ajeer has a contracting service that lets outsourcing establishments issue permits organising their own employees' presence at a beneficiary's worksite. Whether every service contract needs one is not settled in anything we have found, so get the provider's position in writing.
- What is your Nitaqat band? In the red band a provider cannot get new visas, permits for new hires or renewals, change professions or take transfers in — which decides whether it can mobilise, and whether your incumbent's site team can move across.
- Who maintains the fire systems, and on what approval? In-house or subcontracted can both work. Not knowing cannot.
- How will outdoor work be scheduled between 15 June and 15 September? The midday ban stops work in direct sun from 12:00 to 15:00 for three months. Landscaping, external cleaning, roof plant and open car-park work need a summer timetable written into the scope, so the hours are agreed before the heat rather than argued about in it.
- Which roles in your proposal are on the localisation lists? Storekeeper, receptionist, enquiries clerk, stock movement clerk and administrative assistant are all 100% Saudi now, among others in the table above. The provider is bound on its own file.
- What is inside the fixed fee, what is on the schedule of rates, and what is excluded? Get the exclusions list before you compare prices.
- What will we receive each month, and who owns the asset register at the end? PPM completion, the reactive log against agreed response times, open defects and HSE statistics — and a register that is yours.
- How is safety reported to us, and where is the contract run from? Ask how incidents and near misses are recorded, what reaches you each month, and in what format. A provider registered in one city and supervising from another should say so.
Service outsourcing or labour outsourcing: the line Resolution 60339 draws
Resolution 60339 sorts outsourcing into two regulated categories, each with its own licensing, and it places obligations on the company receiving the service as well as on the provider. What each side carries depends on which one the arrangement on site actually is.
| Service outsourcing (تعهيد الخدمات) | Internal labour outsourcing (تعهيد القوى العاملة) | |
|---|---|---|
| What is contracted | A defined service, for a defined scope and duration | A non-Saudi worker placed at your establishment |
| Who supervises day to day | The provider, managing its own personnel and resources | You |
| How the resolution describes pricing | Linked to deliverables | Generally by hours or labour rates |
| Tools and the workplace | The provider's | Yours |
| Licence | Commercial registration and the licence for the activity performed | An MHRSD licence for labour outsourcing |
| Ajeer | Ajeer Contracting, for the provider's employees at your site — confirm whether it applies | An electronic Ajeer contract and permit before work starts, for up to three years or the end of the contract if sooner |
| What you carry | Holding the provider to the scope — and, where Ajeer permits apply, the permit rules opposite | No work before the permit; work stops when it expires; tasks only within the registered profession; the permit used only by your establishment |
The category is decided by what happens on site, not by the contract's title, and supervision is the distinguishing feature. A "facility management agreement" whose cleaners take their daily instructions from your housekeeping supervisor is labour outsourcing on the operational facts; one whose cleaners are directed by the provider's own supervisor against a written standard is service outsourcing. A proposal may show how many people the provider plans to deploy, and a line may be priced per person; neither settles the category on its own. Under service outsourcing, absence cover, training and the delivery obligation are the provider's problem.
The Resolution 60339 contract audit tests a contract you have already signed, the manpower supply guide sets out the three legal ways to get people onto a site, and service outsourcing versus labour outsourcing sets the two side by side.
What actually changes in a mobilisation
The first month of an FM contract is not set-up. It is when everything the incumbent did or did not do becomes visible.
| Step | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Asset survey | The register built or checked: what is there, its condition, its criticality | The PPM schedule and the price depend on it; defects found here belong outside the fixed fee |
| Records and warranties | Service history and fire-system test records collected; equipment under warranty identified | A warranty claim, a disputed failure or an inspection turns on documented history |
| Specialist subcontracts | Fire systems, lifts and other specialist work: which contracts transfer, end or are re-let | The safety-systems maintenance contract is a Civil Defense licensing document |
| Site team | Who employs each person, what Qiwa and GOSI show, what end-of-service has accrued and against whom | If employment with the incumbent ends, final settlement is due within one week, or two if the employee resigned (Resolution 112377, row 36); transfers in need the new employer out of the red band |
| Access | Gate passes, inductions, permits to work | On Royal Commission and MODON sites these set the start date |
| Cutover | A defined date on which responsibility passes | No gap in cover, and no week in which each contractor thinks the other is responsible |
None of that can be timed before the site has been seen. A provider that promises mobilisation in a fixed number of weeks without a survey is quoting a number it does not have; the lead time is a term to agree at award.
How SCPL runs facility management
SCPL contracts facility management as service outsourcing. It employs and supervises its own workforce, delivers a defined scope against agreed KPIs and carries the delivery obligation; the client holds SCPL to the outcome rather than directing individuals. Contracts are run from the head office in Dammam, which covers Dammam, Al Khobar, Dhahran, Jubail, Ras Al Khair and Al Ahsa; SCPL also has an office in Riyadh. Jeddah contracts are run from Dammam with teams mobilised to site; SCPL has no premises there.
The scope is hard services — HVAC, electrical, plumbing and drainage, fire and life safety system maintenance coordinated to Civil Defense certification requirements, BMS operation where installed, and inspection and certification support including Civil Defense requirements — and soft services: cleaning, hospitality, landscaping, waste management and pest control. PPM is built from an asset register and criticality assessment; response and rectification times are set in the contract; KPIs, SLA performance and HSE statistics are reported on an agreed cycle. It is contracted as integrated FM with a named facility manager, as an annual maintenance contract with an asset survey before pricing, or as industrial FM inside the site's own permit-to-work system. Where an incumbent's site team transfers, SCPL handles the transfer and documentation within the applicable labour requirements. SCPL holds ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 certification.
- Facility management in Saudi Arabia, with integrated FM, hard services and MEP, soft services, annual maintenance contracts and industrial FM.
- By city: Dammam, Al Khobar, Jubail Industrial City, Riyadh and Jeddah.
- Operations and maintenance — process plant, utilities and turnarounds, scoped separately from the built estate.
SCPL does not act as an Employer of Record. If you need people working under your own direction — including Saudi nationals for localised roles such as receptionist and administrative assistant — SCPL's recruitment service sources them for your own establishment. The fire-system certificate is issued by Civil Defense, not by SCPL, and SCPL does not publish response times before it has seen a site.
Ask for a written scope — send the site and building type, an asset list or the incumbent's current scope, your operating hours and any access constraints, and you will get back a scope, the KPIs it will be measured against, and the answer to question eight.
Looking for work in facility management rather than buying it? Register as a candidate; the contact form is for companies.
FAQ
What does a facility management company do in Saudi Arabia?
It keeps a building or site working under a written scope: hard services such as HVAC, electrical, plumbing and fire and life safety systems, and soft services such as cleaning, hospitality, landscaping, waste and pest control. Under Resolution 60339 that is service outsourcing — the provider employs and supervises its own workforce and is held to a defined scope.
Is facility management the same as manpower supply?
No. Manpower supply in the strict sense is internal labour outsourcing: a worker who remains another establishment's employee, placed under your supervision. It is a separately licensed activity under Resolution 60339, documented on Ajeer, and it puts obligations on you as the receiving company. Facility management is service outsourcing: the provider directs its own people and is held to a scope.
Do outsourced FM staff count towards our Nitaqat band?
Not as a rule. People who remain another company's employees are not counted as yours. The one exception Qiwa lists is narrow: Saudis leased from a licensed recruitment company (category A), an employment company or a Saudi secondment provider count at the hiring establishment, capped at 10% of its Saudi employees.
How much does facility management cost in Saudi Arabia?
No official benchmark exists, and this page does not invent one. Contracts are usually a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope plus a schedule of rates, or a fixed annual fee for named assets. What sits inside the fee, and what is excluded, matters more than the headline number.
Can a new FM contractor take over our existing site team?
Often, but it is a documentation exercise first: who employs each person, what Qiwa and GOSI show, and what end-of-service has accrued and against whom. A contractor in the red Nitaqat band cannot take transfers in at all.
Official sources
Verify current requirements directly with the authorities — rules and fees in this area change, and the official portal is always ahead of any guide, including this one.
- Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD)
- Ajeer — the platform outsourcing arrangements are documented on
- Civil Defense (998)
- Bureau of Experts at the Council of Ministers — official texts of Saudi laws
- Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu
- MODON — Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones