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Call to confirm the Payment Application arrived

Phone your main contractor's QS the day after you send your application: has it landed, is anything missing, is anything unclear? Better to hear about a problem on day one than find it in the Payment Notice.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

Why it matters

An application can sit unopened in an inbox, land in a spam folder or arrive without the one attachment the assessor needed. You will not find out until the Payment Notice tells you. By then the cycle is fixed and the missing piece waits a month. A 2 minute call the day after you send finds all of that while it can still be fixed. It also starts the conversation with the assessor before they start cutting, and that changes how they approach your figures. Silence after sending is not efficiency. It is a month of risk you chose not to check.

How to do it

  1. Phone your main contractor's QS or assessor the working day after the application goes.
  2. Ask three things: has it arrived, is anything missing, is anything unclear?
  3. Record in the cycle folder who you spoke to and what was said.
  4. Send anything they ask for the same day, and note what was sent and when.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A steelwork subcontractor emails application six, for £110,000, to the main contractor's named recipients on the 25th, with the back-up attached. Its QS phones the main contractor's assessor on the 26th.

What happens

  1. The assessor confirms the application arrived but says the attachment with the erection measure did not open.
  2. The QS resends the measure as a smaller PDF within the hour and confirms by email.
  3. The assessor mentions that the main contractor's commercial manager has queried one variation and wants the instruction reference.
  4. The QS sends the instruction reference the same afternoon.

The outcome

The Payment Notice certifies £108,000 against the £110,000 applied, with the measure and the variation both accepted. Without the call, nobody could have checked the measure, and the variation would have had no support.

To have this set up for you, see our Underpayment Prevention service.