Subcontractors Payment Charge
With many building company’s going broke in recent times many sub- contractors have been left out of pocket.
There are often some indicators if you are a “subby” on a building site that the Principal Contractor is under financial stress. Some of these indicators may include your payment claims not being paid on time, the amount of your payment claims being disputed over disingenuous complaints about the work and other “subbys” working on the same site experiencing similar issues.
If any of these factors are evident then you should immediately protect yourself by having us prepare and serve a Notice Of Claim on the Principal Contractor and the Recipient (who is the party the Principal Contractor is doing the job for).
What is a Notice of Claim?
Example: You are hired by ABC Building to undertake the roofing aspects on a build of 5 houses in a development as a subcontractor to ABC Building. ABC Building has a Building Contract with Peter Smith to construct the 5 houses and the Building Contract provides for progress payments.
You have put in an Invoice for part (or all) of your roofing work for $100,000.00 and are not paid on the due date.
You engage us to lodge with both ABC Building and Peter Smith a Notice of Claim. The Notice of Claim then charges the $100,000.00 you are owed to be paid to you directly out of the next progress payment from Peter Smith to ABC Building. Peter Smith deducts that payment to you from that progress payment to ABC Building.
This stops the money you are owed going into the hands of ABC Building who may use the money to pay other creditors because ABC Building is under financial pressure.
The Notice of Claim creating the charge is a powerful tool to secure your money but must be properly particularised and compliant with certain provisions of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) otherwise it will be of no effect.
There are also strict time limits in which you need to issue the Notice of Claim creating the charge.
We offer fixed fee services for each stage of the process from preparing and serving the Notice of Claim to then seeking enforcement of that if required through the Court to get you your money.