Under Cap. 652 the count is calendar days, then adjudication
The Security of Payment Ordinance runs the payment cycle on calendar days and the adjudication on working days. Mixing the two is how a deadline gets missed.
QScope Team · 27 April 2026 · 6 min read
The Construction Industry Security of Payment Ordinance (Cap. 652) is a timetable as much as a right. It came into force on 28 August 2025 and applies to contracts entered into on or after that date. Getting value on the certificate is only half the job. The other half is counting the days correctly, and the Ordinance uses two different units depending on which stage you are in.
The payment cycle runs on calendar days
The ordinary payment machinery is counted in calendar days, weekends and public holidays included. There is no stripping out of non working days here.
- Payment claim served. The date of service is day zero for the cycle.
- Payment response within thirty days. Thirty calendar days from the claim, not thirty working days.
- Payment due within sixty days. Sixty calendar days as the statutory backstop for the sum to fall due.
Adjudication runs on working days
When a payment dispute goes to adjudication, the count changes. The adjudicator’s decision runs on a separate timetable of fifty-five working days, so weekends and public holidays are excluded from that count. This is the trap. A surveyor who carries the calendar day habit into the adjudication window, or the working day habit into the payment cycle, will land on the wrong date every time.
Why the count decides the case
Under a security of payment regime the deadline is the substance. A payment response that arrives on day thirty-one has arrived late whatever it says. An adjudication step counted against the wrong calendar can miss its window. There is no VAT or GST in Hong Kong to complicate the figure, so the whole of the risk sits in value and in the count, which puts the count at the centre of everything.
The discipline
Fix the service date of every payment claim, count the response and payment deadlines in calendar days from it, and switch to working days only when a dispute enters adjudication. On HKIA and government GCC jobs the contract sets the commercial terms, but the Ordinance sets the clock, and the party that counts it correctly is the party that keeps its rights.
QScope counts every Ordinance deadline in the right units and flags the adjudication window separately, so the payment clock and the dispute clock never blur.