Our applications have always been paid, so nobody has checked they're valid
It works until the month someone reads the payment clauses and finds the form, the route or the named recipient was never right.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
What's happening?
Being paid every month shows the relationship works. It does not prove your applications meet the signed subcontract: the right form, the right recipient, the right date and the right back-up.
The gap shows up when something changes: a new commercial team at your main contractor, a tighter cash position or a disputed cycle. How you have always done it may count as evidence. What it counts for depends on the documents and the facts.
When your main contractor decides to argue, an application that was never valid may not fix the sum in your favour. That holds even when its own notice is missing. A quiet month is the time to compare your routine with the signed terms and fix the gaps. That will not answer every legal point, but it removes the easy arguments.
The solution
Compare one live application with the signed subcontract. Check the date it must go, the named recipient, the required form, the sum and basis it must state, and how it must be sent. Write down every gap between habit and the written terms, then fix them before the next deadline.
Underpayment Prevention makes that comparison on each of your contracts, corrects the templates and the routine, and proves them on the next live cycle. So the month your main contractor chooses to argue is a month your paperwork is already right.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A roofing subcontractor has been paid on every application for two years. It has never read the payment clauses of the subcontract it signs most often. In a quiet month, its live routine is compared with the signed terms.
What happens
- The application has been going by email to the project quantity surveyor. The subcontract requires it to go to the head office address named in the particulars.
- The application has gone on the last Friday of the month. The subcontract fixes the 25th.
- The application has never stated the sum considered due and its basis in the form the subcontract requires.
- None of it has mattered while the main contractor paid.
- The next application goes to the named address on the 25th, in the required form. The old habit is recorded on the contract summary.
The outcome
The month the main contractor chooses to argue, the paperwork is already right.