These are the statutory timings under the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Act 2009 (ACT). They are what the platform counts to on a Australian Capital Territory contract, with the one exception noted below.
If your contract heads the document a progress claim, these are your deadlines too: progress claim and payment claim are two names for the same document, and the Act uses the second.
- Payment schedule due
- 10 business days s 16(4)(b)(ii)
- Payment due
- 15 business days s 13(1)
- Claim can be served from
- On or after the last day of the calendar month the claim covers. s 15
- And no later than
- Within 12 months after the work the claim relates to was last carried out. s 15(5)(b)
- If no schedule arrives
- The respondent becomes liable to pay the full claimed amount on the due date, and you may recover it as a debt. ss 16(4), 17
- A further chance to schedule
- 5 business days s 19(2)(b) Only where the respondent gave no payment schedule and did not pay the claimed amount by the due date. The claimant must notify the respondent of their intention to apply for adjudication within the 20 business days immediately following the due date, and the window runs from the respondent’s receipt of that notice.The platform states this window. It does not count it, because the notice that starts it happens off the platform.
How to read a citation
"s 14(4)(b)(ii)" is a section, subsection and paragraph of the Act named above. Every deadline the platform counts comes from the consolidated Act its own deadline engine is built from, and is checked against that engine automatically. If the two ever disagreed, the platform would fail to build rather than publish a number it does not itself use. One figure is the exception, and it is marked where it appears: the further chance to give a payment schedule. That window opens only if the claimant serves a notice of intention to apply for adjudication, which happens off the platform, so the Act's rule is stated here without a clock behind it.
General information, not legal advice
These are the statutory defaults. Your contract can vary some of them (always in the direction of a shorter schedule window, sometimes in the direction of a longer claiming period) and none of this is advice about your situation. Where a deadline matters, check the Act and take advice.
What these terms mean
The deadlines above are counted in business days as the Act itself defines them: weekends and public holidays excluded, and in several jurisdictions a Christmas shutdown as well. If the vocabulary is new, start here:
- What a payment claim is: The document, what makes it valid, and why it is not an invoice.
- Progress claims and payment claims: Two names for the same document, and the one word that has to be on it.
- Payment schedules: The head contractor's reply, its deadline, and what happens when it never arrives.
- Claims lodged in a head contractor's portal: Claiming through Payapps or Aconex: what the platform records, and what it does not do.
- Retention: What is held back from each claim, and when you get it back.
- Reference dates and claim periods: Which dates a claim covers, and the earliest day you can serve it.
- Glossary of claim and contract terms: What your contract calls it, what the Act calls it, and what it means.