CIPAA runs on working days, counted from the claim

CIPAA 2012 gives a party who has not been paid a statutory right to adjudicate the payment dispute. Adjudication is fast and binding on an interim basis, and it is the reason the Malaysian payment regime has teeth. But the right runs off a timeline, and the timeline is counted in working days. Count it wrong and you either move too early, before the dispute has crystallised, or too late, after the moment has passed.

The timeline in order

One sequence governs the whole thing, and each leg follows from the one before.

• Payment claim served. The start point. Everything else is measured from this date.
• Payment response. Ten working days for the payer to answer, admit, dispute or reduce.
• Payment due. The contractual payment term, commonly around thirty days on Malaysian building work.
• Adjudication. Where the sum is disputed or unpaid, the payment dispute can be referred to adjudication.

The right to adjudicate is not a separate track. It grows out of a claim served and a response, or an absence of one, on this same timeline.

Why working days trip people up

Because the instinct is to count calendar days. The ten working day response window excludes weekends and public holidays, so a count that includes them lands several days early. A payee who assumes calendar days chases before the payer is late. A payer who assumes calendar days serves the response after the window has already closed. In a country with a full calendar of gazetted holidays, the gap between a calendar count and a working day count can be a week or more.

The service date anchors everything

Every leg is measured from when the payment claim was served, so the single most important record on the file is proof of service and its date. Without it you cannot show when the response was due, when payment fell due, or that the payer is out of time. With it, the whole timeline is fixed and the route to adjudication is clear.

The discipline

Diary the service date, count the response in working days, add the contract payment term, and know before you act whether the dispute has crystallised into a payment dispute the Act will hear. CIPAA rewards the party who counts correctly and quietly penalises the one who does not.

Adjudication is powerful because it is fast. Fast processes are unforgiving of bad arithmetic, so count in working days, anchor to the service date, and the Act does the rest.