Project Management Saudization: Decision 41454 and the 70% at Entity Level

Project management saudization is set by Ministerial Decision No. 41454. The percentage is 70% at entity level, and the application date recorded for it is 7/9/1448 AH, 14/2/2027. Its application date therefore falls after the date this guide is written, not before it.

That makes it a different thing to read than a decision whose application date has passed. The figure an employer reads in the files today is not a figure being assessed today. It is a figure to measure against ahead of the recorded date. This guide reads what this decision provides, and stops there.

1. The percentage: 70% at entity level

The percentage set in Decision 41454 is 70%, and the computation is at entity level. In these decisions the entity is the capacity the Ministry deals with for the purposes of computing localisation, and it represents all the branches of a single establishment operating in the same economic activity. Several branches of one owner in one economic activity are measured together, which is why a branch manager reading a branch figure is reading the wrong number.

This is one of the decisions that cut across activities: the denominator of its percentage is the workers in the professions named in the decision, not the establishment’s total headcount. And the project management professions guide is among the guides from which this denominator was read, so there is no need here to borrow the wording of another decision.

This holds for the decisions that cut across activities. It is not a rule about every localisation decision, and stating it without its scope is how a wrong number gets built. Decision 208819, on the sales outlets of seven economic activities, sets its 70% on the total workers at the outlet. Decision 212535, on real-estate activities and professions, sets its 70% on the total number of workers at establishments operating in those activities. The denominator is read off each decision’s own guide, exactly as the level of measurement is.

One distinction is worth holding before any of this reaches a spreadsheet. The Ministry’s own answer in its guides says that a localisation decision is applied to the professions the decision targets. That is a statement about the scope of application. Whether the percentage is calculated on those professions alone is a separate question, and it is answered by the decision’s own percentage sentence, not by the answer about scope. The two sentences read alike and they do not say the same thing, and reading the second out of the first is how a denominator gets invented.

2. Scope: 3 or more workers in project management professions

The scope sentence, in its own words: “all private-sector establishments operating in the Saudi market in which 3 or more workers work in project management professions”.

The trigger sits on the workers in the targeted professions. It does not sit on the size of the establishment and it does not sit on the number of projects it runs. Which job titles fall inside “project management professions” is read from the targeted-professions table in the procedural guide, and the profession tables in these decisions are keyed to the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations issued by the General Authority for Statistics. The enumeration of those professions was not established here.

3. The application date: 14/2/2027

The application date recorded in this decision is 7/9/1448 AH, 14/2/2027. The grace period in this family of decisions is defined in the guides as the period between the date the ministerial decision is published and the date it is applied and enforced. It runs from publication of the decision, not from publication of the guide and not from the establishment’s knowledge of it.

What was not established for this decision is a counted duration for the grace period, of the kind established for other decisions in the same family, where the number of months is printed alongside the date. What is recorded here is the application date, which is the operative figure, and the duration is read from the decision’s page at the Ministry when it is needed.

Application dates in this family differ from decision to decision, and each one is read off its own decision. Nothing on this page should be read as a claim about how this date stands in relation to the rest of the family.

Dates are shown as the documents print them, Hijri and Gregorian together where both appear. No conversion was made between the two calendars in either direction, so what is printed here is what the documents print and not what is computed.

4. The issuance date is printed two ways

This is a point to flag before anything is built on this decision’s date. The issuance date of Decision 41454 was read two ways:

• The signed decision was read as 30/2/1448 AH.
• The guide page at the Ministry prints 1 Rabi al-Awwal 1448, against the same Gregorian date: 13/8/2026.

The two days are adjacent, and both readings are recorded here without preferring one over the other. Anyone who needs to state the issuance date is safer citing the Gregorian date, or citing the Hijri date with both readings noted. One of the two is not picked silently, and a second date is not computed from a date that is itself unsettled.

5. The wage floor: what was not established here

A number of localisation decisions make the counting of a Saudi worker in the percentage conditional on a minimum for the worker’s contribution wage registered with the General Organization for Social Insurance. It is a counting condition, not a minimum wage: a Saudi below the floor simply does not count toward the percentage, and there is nothing in it preventing a contract below that figure.

No wage floor was established in the guide for project management professions, and none was established in the guides for administrative support professions, sales professions or procurement professions either. That is an absence from the reading, not a denial that a condition exists. It is not sound to write that these professions carry no wage condition. The floor is read from the decision’s own procedural guide.

6. The decision updates an earlier one, and its cancellation clause is qualified

Decision 41454 is worded as “approval of an update to the procedural guide”, and its preamble names the decision it updates: Ministerial Decision No. 141749 dated 11/9/1444 AH.

Its cancellation clause is the qualified form: “what conflicts with the provisions of this decision among earlier decisions is cancelled, in so far as it does not conflict with what is stated in paragraph three”, and paragraph three in these decisions is the higher-percentage rule, under which a profession caught by two decisions takes the higher of the two. This is the same form carried by the engineering professions decision and the administrative support professions decision, and it differs from the unqualified form carried by the sales, marketing and procurement decisions.

The text of Decision 141749 was not obtained. Its citation was read, not its text, so nothing is said here about its content.

7. The statutory basis

The signed Decision 41454 opens with the basis its family opens with: Article 11 bis and Article 36 of the Labor Law, issued by Royal Decree No. M/51 dated 23/8/1426 AH and its amendments.

What is established here is that the decision states its reliance on those two articles. The text of the two articles and the powers they confer were not established here, and they are not explained on this page.

8. Professional accreditation

Professional accreditation is a counting condition in a number of localisation decisions, of the same kind as a wage floor: a worker who does not hold it is not counted in the percentage. Three authorities are named across the guides read for this material: the Saudi Organization for Chartered and Professional Accountants for the accounting professions, the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties for the health professions, and the General Authority of Civil Aviation for the licensed aviation professions. That is what those guides were read to say, and it is not a census of what the decisions contain.

No accrediting authority and no professional-accreditation condition was read in Decision 41454. That is an absence from the reading and not a denial. A decision in which no authority was named in the guides read is not thereby a decision without an accreditation condition, and settling the question either way is a matter for the decision’s own procedural guide and the competent authority.

9. Non-compliance and the table the decision refers to

Two things trigger non-compliance under these guides: failing to reach the required percentage, or assigning any task of a localised profession to a non-Saudi, directly or indirectly, under any other job title.

On penalties, the project management decision refers to Decision 112377 dated 21/8/1447 AH, which is the table carried today by the schedule of violations and penalties published at the Ministry. Among the decisions read for this material, no other was found referring to that table: the rest refer to older tables. No riyal figure is attributed to this decision here, and no claim is made that a decision referring to an older table is thereby weakened, repealed or unenforceable. The relationship between a decision’s cross-reference and the table published today was not established in any source read.

A localisation decision is an obligation separate from the Nitaqat programme. The Ministry answers the question in its own guides: the localisation decision is applied to the professions the decision targets at entity level, the penalties provided for in law apply regardless of the establishment’s band in Nitaqat, and the establishment’s band does not affect the calculation of the localisation percentage. The other direction of the question, whether meeting a decision moves the band or whether the headcount a decision targets is weighted in the Nitaqat formula, was not established in any source read here. The required figure under the programme is a different number, and estimating it is what the Nitaqat calculator is for.

What the text does not settle

• The enumeration of the professions inside “project management professions” in the decision’s table.
• The wage floor in this decision’s guide: an absence from the reading, not a denial, as in section 5.
• A counted duration for the grace period in this decision, as in section 3.
• The rounding rule for a fraction of a worker in this decision’s guide. The marketing, sales and procurement guides state it; it was not established in this one.
• A professional-accreditation condition in this decision and the authority for it, neither affirmed nor denied.
• The content of Decision 141749, which this decision updates.
• The text of Article 11 bis and Article 36 of the Labor Law and the powers they confer.
• The penalty amount arising from a breach of this decision.

Each of these is a matter to be referred to the decision’s procedural guide and the competent authority.

What your system should record

The figure the Ministry sees is read from the GOSI registration, not from your file. Monitoring runs on the job titles and wages in the social insurance database, and the wage tested is the contribution wage registered there, not the basic wage and not the total in the contract. So what is worth holding in your own employee file is what you can reconcile against that registration:

• The job title registered with GOSI for each worker, and its code in the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations.
• The number of workers in project management professions in the entity, which is both the denominator of the percentage and the scope trigger.
• The actual work the worker performs, where it parts company with the registered title.
• Which branches fall inside the entity: which are in the same economic activity and which are outside it.
• The recorded application date, 7/9/1448 AH, 14/2/2027, held on a calendar you review rather than in memory.

Checklist

• Do you know how many workers you have in project management professions at entity level, rather than at branch level?
• Has that number reached 3 or more, bringing the establishment inside the decision’s scope?
• Are you dividing by the workers in project management professions, or by your total headcount?
• Do the titles registered with GOSI match the actual work being performed?
• Is 14/2/2027 on a calendar you review, or is it left to memory?
• Do you have a profession caught by two decisions, and have you read what paragraph three provides for it?
• Have you read the wage floor from the decision’s procedural guide, instead of assuming there is none?

Why this turns into a problem

A decision whose application date has not arrived reads as deferred, so consideration of it gets deferred too. The structure of the percentage makes that expensive: 70% of the workers in project management professions is not a figure reached with one hire, and the trigger is 3 or more workers, so an establishment with three people in these professions is inside the decision from the first day the count reaches three.

Some of the error sources here are not exposed by the date at all. One is dividing by total headcount instead of by the workers in the targeted professions, which produces a figure that is not this decision’s figure. One is reading a branch on its own when the branch sits inside the entity. One is treating the absence of a wage floor from the reading as a denial that one exists, and counting a Saudi who may not clear a condition nobody read. One is picking one of two issuance dates silently and computing another date from it. Fitting a particular case to the rule is a matter for the statutory text and the competent authority.

This is where it pays to have an employee’s facts in a single file. That is what Qoyod HR provides: a single employee file holding the contract, the documents and their expiry dates with an alert before them, an attendance record for each employee, and their leave, salary and end-of-service entitlements. End-of-service, overtime and leave-balance calculations are built into the system. It is a standalone HR system with its own subscription, and the connection to Qoyod Accounting is now available.

For more guides and templates, browse the HR Resource Centre.

Frequently asked questions

What is the localisation percentage for project management professions under Decision 41454?

The percentage set by Ministerial Decision No. 41454 is 70% at entity level. In the decisions that cut across activities the denominator of the percentage is the workers in the professions the decision lists, not the establishment’s total headcount.

Which establishments does the project management localisation decision apply to?

The scope sentence in Decision 41454 reads: all private-sector establishments operating in the Saudi market in which 3 or more workers work in project management professions. So the trigger is 3 or more workers in the targeted professions, measured at entity level and not at the branch.

When does the project management localisation decision start to apply?

The application date recorded for Decision 41454 is 7/9/1448 AH, 14/2/2027. No counted grace period in months was established for this decision in the way it was established for other decisions in the same family, where the duration is printed alongside the date. Dates are shown as the sources print them, with no conversion between the two calendars.

Why are two issuance dates given for Decision 41454?

The issuance date of Decision 41454 is printed two ways in the sources read. The signed decision was read as 30/2/1448 AH, and the Ministry’s own guide page prints 1 Rabi al-Awwal 1448 against the same Gregorian date of 13/8/2026. The two days are adjacent, and both readings are recorded here without preferring one. The safer course is to cite the Gregorian date, or to cite the Hijri date with both readings noted. Do not pick one of them silently.

Is there a minimum wage for counting in the project management localisation decision?

No wage floor was established in the guide for project management professions, and none was established in the guides for administrative support professions, sales professions or procurement professions either. That is an absence from the reading and not a denial that a condition exists, so it is not sound to write that these professions carry no wage condition. The floor is read from the decision’s own procedural guide.

Which decision does 41454 update, and what is its cancellation clause?

Decision 41454 is worded as approval of an update to the procedural guide, and its preamble names Ministerial Decision No. 141749 dated 11/9/1444 AH. Its cancellation clause is the qualified form: what conflicts with the provisions of this decision among earlier decisions is cancelled, in so far as it does not conflict with what is stated in paragraph three, and paragraph three in these decisions is the higher-percentage rule. The text of the earlier decision was not obtained. Its citation was read, not its text, so nothing is said about its content.

Statutory references

This guide rests on Ministerial Decision No. 41454 and its procedural guide as published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, on the signed decision for its statutory basis, its preamble and its cancellation clause, and on the schedule of violations and penalties page published at the Ministry for the fact that the table carried there today is Decision 112377.

No percentage is published here that was not read from this decision’s guide, no penalty amount is attributed to it, and no profession is attributed to its table. Dates are reproduced in both calendars as the sources print them, with no conversion.

Subjects that border this decision and are not settled on this page: registration with the General Organization for Social Insurance, and the contributions recorded against a worker under it; the contribution rates applied to a registered wage; and the Saudi Unified Classification of Occupations, from which the profession codes are drawn. None of these is read from this decision’s guide, and none of them is a source for the localisation percentage stated here.

This guide is a regulatory explanation, not legal advice. In an existing dispute or a particular case, the statutory text and the competent authority remain the reference.