Seven priorities for organisations adapting to uncertainty

The most immediate priority is to reassess force majeure, material adverse change, hardship and contractual relief provisions. Given current geopolitical uncertainty, organisations should review whether existing clauses are broad enough to cover today’s risks, including maritime delays or restrictions, regional conflict, cyber disruption to infrastructure or logistics systems, sanctions, port closures, fuel or utility interruptions, government intervention, export controls and disruption to payment or financial channels.

A major weakness in many contracts is that force majeure provisions are drafted too narrowly or contain procedural requirements that become difficult to satisfy during fast-moving events. In practice, companies frequently lose protection not because disruption does not qualify, but because notice periods, mitigation obligations, or evidentiary requirements are not properly managed.

GCC companies should therefore conduct regular reviews of key commercial agreements and, where necessary, negotiate short-form amendments or side letters clarifying entitlement to relief. Bespoke AI-enabled tools can support these reviews by rapidly analysing large contract portfolios, identifying relevant provisions, and flagging agreements that may require amendment or clarification.

The second priority should be securing contractual flexibility around supply, delivery, sourcing, and logistics. In the current environment, continuity depends less on strict contractual entitlement and more on the ability to adapt quickly when routes, suppliers, or infrastructure become unavailable.

Companies should therefore ensure that contracts expressly permit diversion of cargo, substitution of transport routes, use of alternative ports, changes to delivery sequencing, substitution of supply sources, revised delivery windows, partial performance arrangements, and temporary operational workarounds.

These rights should not be left to implication or informal operational practice. They should be drafted clearly and made immediately exercisable under defined disruption scenarios.

One of the most common legal failures during periods of disruption is inadequate documentation.

Operational teams focus on maintaining performance and preserving commercial relationships. However, companies often fail to comply with contractual notice requirements or preserve evidence needed for future claims.

Organisations should implement disciplined internal procedures requiring early issuance of protective notices, contemporaneous documentation of disruption, records of mitigation efforts, escalation protocols for high-risk contracts, legal review of major operational deviations, and centralised tracking of contractual correspondence.

They should also avoid informal side arrangements agreed through messaging platforms or verbal discussions. During crises, commercial teams frequently make concessions or operational adjustments without considering the legal implications.

The latest regional developments have also reinforced the importance of physical storage and inventory resilience.

Companies should ensure agreements governing storage facilities, terminals, warehousing, and strategic inventory arrangements clearly address priority access rights, withdrawal mechanisms, minimum reserved capacity, allocation during constrained scenarios, curtailment protections, emergency access procedures, and dispute escalation mechanisms.

An increasingly important aspect of resilience is regulatory adaptability. Recent disruptions in the Middle East have increased the possibility of evolving sanctions measures, export controls, customs restrictions, and financial compliance obligations.

Organisations should, therefore, review sanctions screening procedures, counterparty diligence frameworks, trade finance documentation, payment routing arrangements, shipping compliance controls, and escalation procedures for high-risk jurisdictions. Purpose-built AI-enabled tools can enhance these reviews by automating sanctions screening, identifying emerging compliance risks, and flagging transactions or counterparties that warrant further investigation.

A major mistake in traditional business continuity planning is the assumption that disruption occurs in isolation. However current regional environment demonstrates the opposite. Maritime disruption may coincide with cyber incidents, infrastructure outages, sanctions restrictions, labour shortages, financing constraints, or regulatory intervention.

GCC organisations should therefore stress-test contracts and operational plans against combined and interconnected scenarios rather than isolated incidents.

Given the scale of contractual exposure faced by many large GCC organisations, manual review alone is unlikely to be sufficient.

Companies should consider deploying technology-enabled contract review and risk assessment tools capable of rapidly triaging large portfolios of agreements.

AI-assisted review systems can help identify missing force majeure protections, inconsistent risk allocation provisions, sanctions exposure, notice obligations, termination rights, inflexible delivery terms, and insurance inconsistencies.