Blog
There are countless problems that ache Egypt’s construction industry. Delays, disruptions, and even complete project failures can come from anywhere. Equipment shortages. Skill gaps. Resource constraints. Those are well-known.
But there’s one problem that’s almost universal across every project, treated as a fact of life rather than a solvable issue. Payroll.
It sits quietly in the background, accepted as part of the job, yet it affects everything. Site morale. Workflow continuity. Delivery timelines. Most operators know it’s painful but rarely grasp how deep the problem runs, or that there’s a way to fix it.
When workers don’t get paid, construction stops
Missed salaries mean missing crews
Construction sites don’t fall behind because someone was late printing reports. They fall behind because the rebar crew didn’t show up. Or the shuttering team disappeared. And the reason is usually the same. They didn’t get paid.
A single delay in salary can empty an entire site the next morning. Especially with day-rate or week-rate workers who don’t have contracts, HR support, or any reason to stay loyal. They move where the money moves. If your site isn’t paying, someone else’s is.
Delays affect the entire project
One missed payroll can trigger days or weeks of disruption. Equipment rentals continue. Site security stays in place. Engineers wait on idle ground. Work doesn’t just pause. It drags everything with it.
Studies show cost overruns from project delays can reach 30 percent. And financial friction is a key reason those delays happen. The link is direct. If the money stalls, so does the work.
How payroll actually moves in a construction company
It’s not one transfer. It’s a chain.
Payroll in construction doesn’t move in one step. It travels through a series of people and systems. Finance prepares the files. The bank schedules the transfers. Site accountants break it down by crew and supervisor. Supervisors confirm attendance, hand out cash or cards, and follow up on mismatches. Then finally, workers get paid.
Each link in that chain adds time, risk, and room for error. Bank delays. Holidays. Cut-off times. A worker leaves midweek but still shows up on the list. A contractor adds new workers last minute. The result is hours of back-and-forth between head office and site just to sort out who gets what.
One company, many payrolls
Most construction firms don’t run one payroll. They run three at the same time. Daily workers. Weekly trades. Monthly staff. Some are formal employees. Others are project-based or subcontracted.
Egypt’s construction labor force is around 4 million workers. More than 75% of them are informal. That means no contracts, no bank accounts, and no standardized payment method. They still need to be paid reliably, but they sit completely outside the company’s formal payroll infrastructure.
Most of the admin work is done manually
Despite the size of some of these projects, a lot of payroll tracking still happens on paper. Printed lists. Pen marks. Voice notes. Screenshots.
Site accountants message HR to update numbers. Supervisors send photos of ID cards. If anything doesn’t match, payment gets delayed or skipped. It’s messy, manual, and no one has full visibility at any point in the process.
Why most construction workers still get paid in cash
Most workers aren’t in the banking system
Even as Egypt’s financial inclusion rate climbs to over 70%, that figure doesn’t reflect what happens on site. Among construction laborers, informality dominates — more than 70% of workers in the sector are considered informal, as mentioned above. That means no contracts, no bank accounts, and no fixed payroll structure.
These are the workers who build the projects. And most of them still get paid in cash. They don’t want bank accounts. Or they can’t open one. Or they don’t trust the system. Companies can’t force it. So they adapt.
Cash is still the default for most sites
Companies that want to comply with the 2019 non-cash payroll law often find themselves stuck. The law doesn’t account for informal, rotating crews. So even firms with digital payroll systems still move large volumes of cash to the site every month.
Cash is sorted by crew, packed, and handed to site accountants. Workers line up, sometimes in the hundreds, just to collect what’s owed. On huge projects like El Dabaa, this isn’t theory, it’s reality. One payday can mean a thousand people off-task, waiting under a tent for hours.
Cards don’t fix the problem
Prepaid payroll cards are marketed as a digital solution. But for most companies, they just shift the burden. Distribution, onboarding, reissues — all of it falls on the employer. And when you’re dealing with workers spread across ten sites, rotating weekly, it quickly becomes unmanageable.
That’s why many firms revert to what they know. Cash may be risky, but at least it’s under their control.
What payroll delays really cost construction companies
A delayed payment can shut down your site
Construction workers don’t wait for follow-ups. If their pay isn’t there, they don’t show up. And when they don’t show up, nothing moves forward — not the pour, not the inspections, not the handover.
Even a short delay can disrupt weeks of planning. Supervisors spend the day chasing attendance. Site engineers stand still. Equipment sits idle. The entire operation stalls because a payment didn’t land on time.
In Egypt, delays tied to financial mismanagement can inflate total project costs by up to 30%. It’s not just the time lost — it’s the compounding cost of everything that gets pushed back with it.
Errors and disputes drain your team
When payroll is handled manually — with spreadsheets, paper, and phone calls — mistakes happen. One wrong name. One missed update. One duplicated entry.
And every mistake creates more work. Site accountants have to check records. Finance teams double back to fix numbers. Workers crowd the office asking why they got shorted. What should take minutes takes hours — sometimes days. In the meantime, tension builds, and trust erodes.
Turnover is the hidden cost
Missed or inconsistent payments don’t just frustrate workers — they push them out. Almost half of workers globally say they’d consider quitting after two payroll mistakes. In Egypt, where labor turnover in some sectors hits 30 to 90% annually, that cost adds up fast.
Replacing a single skilled worker can cost 40-80% of their annual salary. That includes training, lost productivity, and the pressure it puts on the rest of the crew. It’s cheaper to pay people correctly and on time than to lose them and start over.
What the rest of the world is doing about it
Most developed markets no longer deal with this problem
In the US, more than 90% of workers are paid through direct deposit. In the UK and across Europe, bank transfers are the default. Salaries arrive on time. Workers don’t line up. No one drives around with envelopes of cash.
The difference isn’t just infrastructure. It’s expectation. Payroll is seen as a non-negotiable system. If money doesn’t arrive, people don’t work — and they have channels to escalate it. So employers have to get it right.
Emerging markets are closing the gap
Even in countries with high informality, payroll systems are evolving. India rolled out mandatory digital wage payments for construction workers in several states. Indonesia and Nigeria are adopting earned wage access and mobile wallet salary transfers for unbanked workers.
Gulf countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia launched wage protection systems to enforce timely digital payments for migrant workers. And fintech solutions are giving unbanked laborers access to mobile accounts and payroll cards — without needing a full bank account.
Flexible systems now support all worker types
Globally, construction companies are moving to platforms that can handle both employees and non-employees in one system. Whether someone is on payroll, freelance, project-based, or subcontracted, they can still be paid digitally and on time.
In the past, payroll systems were built around one type of worker. Now, they’re built around the reality of how companies actually operate.
How Egyptian firms can modernize without adding complexity
You don’t need a full banking rollout to digitize payroll
Many construction companies avoid digitization because they think it means forcing workers to open bank accounts or take on a complicated new system. It doesn’t.
Modern payroll platforms are built to work around Egypt’s realities. They can pay employees, contractors, and day laborers — even if they don’t have bank accounts. Funds go straight to mobile wallets or payroll cards, with no need for the company to manage distribution.
The result is the same outcome every time: workers get paid. On time. With full traceability.
Digital doesn’t mean difficult
Most digital payroll systems used in construction today don’t simplify the process. They just shift the manual work from the site to the office. Others leave the heavy lifting — like card issuance, worker onboarding, or real-time tracking — to the company.
That’s what dopay was built to change. It removes the paperwork, cash runs, and card handouts. It allows finance teams to manage all types of workers from one platform. Transfers are instant. Errors are reduced. Admin time drops.
Hundreds of construction companies in Egypt now run payroll through dopay. It’s fast, reliable, and built to handle how construction actually operates — mixed crews, shifting timelines, and site-based payouts.
Companies like FAS Construction manage thousands of workers across multiple projects with dopay. El Faraby uses it to keep payroll moving on critical infrastructure sites like El Dabaa. No delays. No cash chaos. No admin bottlenecks.
It doesn’t require a banking overhaul. It gives companies control, workers stability, and sites the consistency they need to stay on track.
Control at the top. Stability on the ground.
For site managers, digitization means fewer payment problems to deal with. For finance teams, it means fewer surprises. And for workers, it means trust.
When payroll runs cleanly, the site runs cleanly. That’s not technology for the sake of it. That’s operational control.
Want to see how it works?
If you want to see how you can run payroll for every site from one place, fully digital, with dedicated support for you and your workers, sign up with dopay now and our team will walk you through the system.
