These are the statutory timings under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002 (Vic). They are what the platform counts to on a Victoria 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 15(4)(b)(ii)
- Payment due
- 20 business days s 12(1B)
- Claim can be served from
- On and from the last day of the month the claim covers. Two Victorian quirks: a claim served early is treated as served on the first day it could have been, so serving early never shortens the response clock; and work carried out between 22 and 31 December can only be claimed on and from 31 January. ss 14A(2)(b), 14A(5)(c)
- And no later than
- Up to the day before the date 6 months after practical completion. s 14C(b)
- Releasing retention
- Retention is released by a separate instrument: a performance security claim. It may be served from whichever comes first of 20 business days after the defects liability period ends and the day your contract nominates, and it closes on the last day of the month following the month that defects liability period ends. ss 17B(1), 17C(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 15(4), 16
- A further chance to schedule
- 5 business days ss 18(2), 18(2A) Only where the respondent served no payment schedule and paid or released nothing by the due date. Victoria gives the claimant a shorter run at it than the other states: notice of their intention to apply for adjudication must be served within 10 business days after the due date, and the window runs from the respondent’s receipt of that notice. The same step applies to a performance security claim (s 18A(2)).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.