The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, issued a directive to form a government committee tasked with establishing specific regulations for consortia of contractors with different classifications, to serve as a guide and reference during the implementation of government projects. The directive set a maximum of 60 days for the government agency to award the project to the contractor, starting from the date of award.

The government committee consists of four entities: the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, the General Auditing Bureau. In addition to establishing regulations for contractor consortia, it also develops government mechanisms to regulate the subcontracting of projects by prime contractors to subcontractors.

The recent directive comes after the latest report by the General Auditing Bureau noted that a number of national projects in various regions have been adversely affected due to disparities in contractor performance resulting from differences in their classifications when the project was awarded to a consortium comprising several companies, and also due to the awarding of some projects to unqualified subcontractors.

It is worth noting that the classification of contractors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was first introduced pursuant to Cabinet Decision No. 820 dated 1/7/1393 AH, before a new system was issued by Royal Decree No. (M/18) dated 3/20/1427 AH, followed by the issuance of the Executive Regulations for the Contractors Classification System issued by Ministerial Decision No. 8794 dated 9/8/1427 AH,followed by the new executive regulations for the Contractors Classification System issued by Ministerial Decision No. 22148 dated 10/10/1431 AH.