Counting the working days, and the adjudication that follows

The Construction Contracts Act 2002 does not run on calendar days. It runs on working days, and the single most common mistake in the whole regime is counting the wrong kind of day and landing on the wrong deadline.

What a working day excludes

A working day strips out more than most people remember. Weekends come out, public holidays come out, and, uniquely in New Zealand, the entire period from the twenty fourth of December to the fifth of January comes out as well. A twenty working day count that spans the new year can run several weeks in calendar terms.

• Weekends. Every Saturday and Sunday drops out of the count.
• Public holidays. National holidays are not working days.
• The summer break. The twenty fourth of December to the fifth of January is excluded entirely.

The deadline that decides the money

Serve a payment claim and, where the contract is silent, the payer has twenty working days to respond with a payment schedule, and the same period to the due date for payment. Miss the schedule and the claimed amount becomes due in full. That is the deadline the whole regime turns on, and it is counted in working days from the day the claim was served.

When the payer does not pay

A due debt that goes unpaid is not the end of the road. The Act gives the contractor adjudication, a fast statutory process that produces a binding determination without waiting for a court. Where a payment claim went unanswered and the sum became due, an adjudicator can be asked to enforce it. Where a valuation, a variation or an extension is genuinely disputed, the same process resolves the merits.

Why adjudication has teeth

An adjudicator determination is binding and enforceable, and the process is measured in weeks, not the months a court would take. That speed is deliberate. The Act was built to keep cash moving down the contract chain, and adjudication is the mechanism that stops a payer using delay as leverage.

The discipline

Count every deadline in working days from the served date, mark the summer break on the calendar before December arrives, and diary the day a claim becomes payable if no schedule comes. When it becomes payable and stays unpaid, adjudication is there. The count is the whole game, so never leave it to a guess.