Check the contract permits how you're sending it
If you serve by email, make sure the contract allows it. Turn on delivery and read receipts and keep them, because when a dispute turns on whether something arrived, a receipt beats any memory.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
Why it matters
Sending a document and serving it are different things, and the contract decides whether it was served. Say the contract requires post or hand delivery to a named address, and the application went by email. Your main contractor can argue the cycle never started. Even where email is allowed, a dispute can turn on whether the application arrived. Then you have to prove it. Remembering that it went at about 4pm does not do that. A delivery receipt and a read receipt, saved the same day, do. They cost nothing to collect.
How to do it
- Read the notices clause and note which ways of serving documents it allows, and the address or portal for each.
- Send by an allowed method as well whenever email is not allowed, and keep the proof of posting or the signed delivery note.
- Switch on delivery and read receipts in your email for every application and notice you send.
- Save each receipt into the cycle folder beside the sent application on the day it comes back.
- Screenshot the portal's confirmation, with its timestamp, wherever the contract allows a portal, and file that too.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A subcontract allows service by email to a named address and by recorded post. The subcontractor's application seven, for £64,000, goes by email on the 28th. No Payment Notice or Pay Less Notice arrives. The main contractor later says the email was never received.
What happens
- The subcontractor's QS finds the delivery receipt showing the email reached the main contractor's server at 10:42 on the 28th.
- The read receipt shows the named recipient opened it at 11:15 the same morning.
- The QS sends both receipts to the main contractor with the sent item and the demand for payment.
- The main contractor drops the point and pays the sum applied for by the final date for payment.
The outcome
The £64,000 is paid in full without adjudication. Two receipts that took a minute to save answered the question of whether it arrived.
To have this set up for you, see our Underpayment Prevention service.