Turkish Contractor Prequalification: What to Ask For

Awarding earthworks or plant hire to a contractor in another country turns on one question: can you verify what they tell you? This checklist covers the documents worth requesting from a Turkish contractor and, for each, how to check it independently.

Seven documents to request

The one that matters most

Of these, the work experience certificate carries the most weight. It is issued by the public authority that awarded and accepted the work, states the contract value, and cannot be self-declared. A contractor with genuine public-sector experience will have one; a contractor without any will explain why.

Private-sector work does not generate this document, so its absence is not disqualifying on its own — but ask what replaces it: signed completion certificates, client references you may contact, or photographs with verifiable dates and locations.

Three claims worth verifying independently

1. "We own the fleet"

Owned plant and hired-in plant are different risk profiles. Ask for the registration documents of the machines that will be on your site, with serial numbers. A contractor who sub-hires everything is a broker, which may be fine — but you should know it.

2. "We have done work like this before"

Ask for figures, not adjectives. "We completed 120,000 m³ of excavation with eight machines in fourteen months" is checkable. "We have extensive infrastructure experience" is not.

3. "Our operators are certified"

Turkish operators require a vocational qualification certificate (Mesleki Yeterlilik Belgesi) for plant operation. Ask to see them for the named operators, not a general statement.

Commercial points foreign buyers often miss

• Currency and escalation. Which currency is the contract in, and what happens if the exchange rate moves during the works? This is the single most common source of dispute on Turkish cross-border contracts.
• Payment terms and retention. Turkish market practice differs from Gulf and European norms. Agree the milestone structure explicitly.
• Mobilisation. Who carries the cost and risk of moving plant across a border? Customs, carnets, insurance in transit.
• Applicable law and dispute forum. Turkish courts, arbitration, or a neutral seat — settle this before signing, not after.
• Language of the contract. If there is a Turkish and an English version, state which one governs.

Site-level questions

1. Who is the site manager, and are they on site full time?
2. What is the reporting cadence — daily, weekly, and in what format?
3. How are ground condition changes recorded and priced? (See excavation classes.)
4. What is the HSE regime, and who audits it?
5. How is plant downtime handled — is it deducted?

A note on scale

A smaller contractor is not automatically a higher risk. What matters is whether the specific team assigned to your work has done comparable work, whether the plant is available and maintained, and whether the commercial terms are written down clearly.

Ask for the CVs of the site manager and lead operator. In earthworks, the difference between a good and a poor outcome is usually the people on site, not the size of the head office.

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