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Take every payment date from the signed subcontract and its amendments

A payment diary copied from the last job or the standard form is wrong wherever the amendments moved a date. Build each contract's dates from its own signed wording, and record the clause and the trigger behind every one.

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

Why it matters

Most missed payment deadlines were never in the diary. Or they were in it on the standard form's dates, after the amendments had quietly moved them. One amendment moves the application date from the last Friday to the 25th. Another cuts a notice window from 5 days to 3, or names a new address for payment documents. Each change sits in a schedule of amendments nobody reread after signing. The diary looks complete and is wrong. The first sign is a Payment Notice that arrives before your application was due, or an application your main contractor says was late.

How to do it

  1. Collect the signed subcontract, its schedule of amendments and every document it makes part of the contract. Ignore the tender version and the standard form.
  2. Record the clause behind each payment date, the event that triggers it, how the contract counts the days and how documents must be served.
  3. Write the action beside each date: who acts, who receives it, the form it takes and how it is sent.
  4. Keep your own early reminders separate from the contract deadline, so nobody mistakes an early target for the real date.
  5. Recheck the diary whenever an amendment, a new instruction or a changed address arrives.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A mechanical subcontractor starts a new job on a subcontract it has signed three times before with the same main contractor. Its QS copies the payment dates from the last job's diary.

What happens

  1. Before the first application, the QS checks the dates against this job's signed subcontract and its amendments.
  2. The amendments move the application date from the last working day of the month to the 22nd. They cut the Payment Notice window from 5 days to 3.
  3. They also name a new head office address for payment documents.
  4. The QS rebuilds the diary from the signed wording, with the clause recorded against each date.

The outcome

The first application goes to the new address on the 22nd. On the copied diary it would have gone a week late, to an address the contract no longer names.

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