Send the Payment Application to every recipient the contract names
Some contracts require the application to go to two or more recipients, or to a specific address or portal. Sending it to the QS you deal with day to day isn't the same thing, and the difference can cost you the cycle.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
Why it matters
The person you deal with every day is rarely the person the contract names to receive applications. When a dispute arrives, the contract is what gets read. Say the contract names the commercial director and the accounts address, but the application went only to the site QS. Your main contractor can argue it was never served at all. That argument does not appear in the good months. It appears in the month your main contractor wants to stop its own missed notice fixing a sum. It succeeds, because your own email trail proves where the application went. Send to every named recipient every time, and the argument is gone before it can be made.
How to do it
- Find the notices and payment clauses, and list every person, role, postal address, email address and portal the application must go to.
- Set up a saved recipient group or template with all of them, so the list is not rebuilt from memory each month.
- Send to every one of them on every cycle, even where you know one of the addresses is never read.
- Keep the sent item, with its full recipient list visible, in the cycle folder.
- Check the contract before you change the list when your main contractor's staff change. A new project QS does not change the named recipient.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A subcontract names the main contractor's commercial director and its accounts email address as the recipients for applications. The subcontractor's QS has always sent applications to the project QS she speaks to weekly. Application eight is for £85,000, and no Payment Notice or Pay Less Notice arrives.
What happens
- The subcontractor writes to say the sum applied for has become the sum due because no notice was issued.
- The main contractor replies that no application was served. It went to the project QS, not the named recipients.
- The subcontractor's file shows every application went only to the project QS, so the records cannot answer the point.
- From application nine, every application goes to the commercial director, the accounts address and the project QS. The sent item is filed each time.
The outcome
Application eight settles at £70,000 after negotiation, not the £85,000 applied for. From application nine the recipient argument is closed. The next silent cycle is fixed at the sum applied.
To have this set up for you, see our Underpayment Prevention service.