Resources

Practical guides to the payment and notice rules that decide whether real work is a claim or a write-off.

9 November 2026

Quality records and a payment claim: where the two meet

A payment schedule that values your claim lower often gives quality as the reason. What an adjudicator can actually see, why the ITP and the NCR register belong in the claim rather than beside it, and what a bare assurance is worth.

9 November 2026

What documents carry a variation: five, and three cannot be made later

Variations rarely fall over on price and almost always on assessability. The five documents that carry one through assessment, why three have to exist on the day, and what comes back without an explanation.

9 November 2026

Variation or delay: two claims, two sets of evidence

More work and more time are not the same thing. Putting both in one variation claim usually loses the time half, because the person assessing it cannot assess it. The split, the evidence each half needs, and the case where they run together.

9 November 2026

The site photograph that proves something: what has to be in frame

Most site photographs prove nothing, because they show the result and not the criterion. What has to be in the frame, why the date and position belong to the capture, and when a photograph cannot replace a test record.

9 November 2026

The handover pack: what has to exist before practical completion

At the end the argument is rarely about the work and almost always about the paperwork. What goes in the pack, why it is built during the job rather than after it, and the gaps that push practical completion out.

9 November 2026

Defects list or NCR: which document, and when

On site both get called a defect, and they are two different records with two different consequences. The question that separates them, and why a hundred and eighty unsorted lines hands the superintendent a reason to withhold practical completion.

9 November 2026

The NCR: from raised to verified, and the four dispositions

A non-conformance report is not an admission, it is the evidence that a system works. The five stations, the four dispositions and why verification of effectiveness is the one that matters most.

9 November 2026

Hold points and witness points: the difference that costs days

At a hold point the work stops; at a witness point it does not. Confuse them and you either build past a release or wait for one that was never required. Notice, waiting time, records, and who wears the lost day.

9 November 2026

What goes in an ITP, and what makes one useless

An inspection and test plan nobody opens during the work is a tender attachment. The five columns that turn a plan into a sequence, and the three ways ITPs stop working on site.

9 November 2026

Your contract says 45 days. In New South Wales and Victoria it does not.

The statutory payment period in NSW and Victoria is a maximum, not a fallback for silence. A contract date later than it is a term with no effect to that extent.

3 November 2026

The time bar you could not have complied with: Victoria s 13A

Since Act No. 43/2025, an adjudicator, court, arbitrator or expert can declare a notice-based time bar unfair where compliance was not reasonably possible or would have been unreasonably onerous.

20 October 2026

Victoria rebuilt its Security of Payment Act, and most of it helps you

Act No. 43/2025 repealed reference dates and excluded amounts, put a 20 business day ceiling on any contractual due date, made unfair notice-based time bars declarable, and created a statutory claim for the release of retention and bonds.

6 October 2026

Retention trusts: which states hold your money apart, and which do not

Some Australian jurisdictions require retention money to be held in a trust account. Where they do, an insolvent head contractor’s collapse does not take your retention with it.

22 September 2026

The adjudication response: why the payment schedule decides the case

A respondent generally cannot raise reasons for withholding that were not in its payment schedule. That makes the schedule, not the response, the document that wins or loses.

8 September 2026

Reference dates: one payment claim per date, and the claim you waste

Security of Payment entitles you to serve a payment claim on and from each reference date. Serve two against the same date and the second one is not a claim at all.

21 August 2026

Variations under AS 4000: a direction is a variation whether or not anyone called it one

What makes a direction a variation, how valuation actually works, and why the notice for latent conditions and delay costs is separate from the variation itself.

21 August 2026

Business days across eight jurisdictions, and six different Christmases

Six of the eight Australian jurisdictions stop counting over a Christmas shutdown, and they do not agree on when it starts. Getting it wrong moves deadlines by a fortnight.

21 August 2026

The payment schedule window: what happens when the respondent says nothing

Under the East Coast model, missing the payment schedule window makes the respondent liable for the whole claimed amount with no defence available later. But only if the claim was valid.