Run the security of payment clock on a progress claim

Record what was executed against each claim item for the period as a percentage of its contract quantity. The earned quantity follows from that percentage and the design quantity, and the earned amount from the same percentage and the position total, so one honest number per line produces the whole valuation.

Why: A progress claim built from a single project percentage cannot be checked and therefore cannot be approved without a conversation. Measured line by line, the disagreement is about one claim item rather than about the whole month, and the rest of the money moves while that one is settled.

Read the valuation back against the bill and check the rates it used are the contract rates. Where a claim item has been measured past the quantity the contract carries, deal with it as a change to the position with an order behind it rather than as a larger figure on the same line.

Why: A variation certified quietly is one the client can refuse at the final account, months after the work was built and paid for down the chain. Raising it as a change while it is small is the only version of that conversation where you are not asking to be paid for work already done.

Raise the payment claim from the valuation, carrying retention and any deduction the contract provides for, and serve it the way the contract directs, which under the standard forms is by giving it to the Superintendent. Record the day and the manner of service, because every deadline in the regime counts from that day. In New South Wales the claim must say on its face that it is made under the Act, on every contract signed since 21 October 2019, and a head contractor's claim on the principal must carry the supporting statement that its subcontractors have been paid. Queensland went the other way: any invoice that identifies the work and states the amount is a payment claim there, endorsed or not, so an invoice you did not mean as a claim still starts a clock.

Why: Nothing in the regime waits for the Superintendent. The Act counts from service, the respondent has a fixed number of business days to answer with a payment schedule, and a claim served late, served on the wrong party or missing the words the Act requires is a month of cash flow lost with nobody to blame but the claimant.

Open a clock over the payment claim starting from the day it is served, under the Act of the state the work is in. In New South Wales payment falls due 15 business days after service on a head contract and 20 on a subcontract, and the respondent has 10 business days to answer with a payment schedule; Queensland runs its own count under the Building Industry Fairness Act. A contract may shorten either period and never lengthen it. The clock records the dates rather than leaving them to be worked out when somebody asks.

Why: The single most expensive mistake in interim payment is starting the count on the wrong event, because every deadline behind it inherits the error and none of them look wrong. Anchoring on the day the payment claim is served once makes the whole chain checkable. Business days are not calendar days, the state's public holidays move the answer, and New South Wales strikes 27 to 31 December out of the count as well. Counting them by hand is how a claimant arrives at adjudication one day out of time with a case that was otherwise good.

Read back the dates the Security of Payment Act produces from the day the payment claim is served. The sum payable leads, the due date and the final date for payment sit under it, and the derivation spells out each date against the provision it came from, so every one of them can be quoted rather than asserted. Two dates matter here and only one of them is about money: the date a payment schedule is due, and the date payment is due. A respondent who lets the first pass without a schedule has agreed to the claimed amount.

Why: Deadlines that are typed in are deadlines that are typed in wrong, and a payment regime has more of them than anyone holds in their head. A derivation you can read out loud is what turns a phone call about a late payment into a quotable line.

When the Superintendent's progress certificate comes back, record it against the claim as the payment schedule, with the day it arrived and the amount it schedules. If it schedules less than was claimed it has to say why, and if it arrives after the business days the Act allows it is no schedule at all and the claimed amount stands.

Why: The Superintendent certifies under the contract and the Act runs on its own timetable regardless, so a certificate that arrives late does not move the statutory dates, it only decides whether the respondent still has a schedule. Recording both is what lets you see the two regimes disagree while there is still time to act on it.

When the clock has run out, lodge an adjudication application under the Security of Payment Act. The record the steps above produced, dates, approvals and the documents themselves, is the case, and it is assembled already rather than reconstructed under time pressure. Under the New South Wales Act an unanswered claim needs a notice of intention to apply, served inside the window the Act gives, before the application itself, and both windows are counted in business days.

Why: The difference between a claim that is paid and one that is argued about is almost never the merits. It is whether the dates and the documents were kept as the work happened, because reconstructing them afterwards is expensive and looks exactly like inventing them.