These are the statutory timings under the Construction Contracts Act 2002 (NZ). They are what the platform counts to on a New Zealand 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
- 20 working days s 22(b)(ii)
- Payment due
- 20 working days s 18
- Claim can be served from
- At the end of the relevant period: monthly by default, ending on the last day of the month. ss 17(2), 20(1)
- And no later than
- No statutory longstop: the Act imposes no cap on how long after the work a claim may be served.
- If no schedule arrives
- The payer becomes liable to pay the full claimed amount, recoverable as a debt, and you gain the right to suspend work on notice. ss 22, 23
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.