Counting the days from claim to adjudication
The SOP Act is a timeline before it is anything else. Every right in it runs from the payment claim, in calendar days, and the single most common error is confusing the seven day dispute window with the response period.
QScope Team · 29 April 2026 · 6 min read
The Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act is, at heart, a set of dates. A payment claim starts them, and the right to be paid, the right to withhold, and the right to adjudicate all run from that one service date. Get the counting wrong and you can lose a right you plainly had.
The three clocks
Three periods matter, and they are easy to blur together.
- The response window. The payment response is due within the contract period, capped at twenty-one days from the payment claim, or fourteen days where the contract is silent.
- The due date. Payment falls due within the contract period, capped at thirty-five days from the payment claim, or fourteen days if nothing is agreed.
- The dispute settlement period. A separate seven day window, later in the sequence, before the claimant may lodge an adjudication application.
The seven day trap
The most damaging mistake is treating the seven days as the response period. It is not. Seven days is the dispute settlement period, the short window that opens after the payment cycle before an adjudication application can be made. Reading it as the response deadline makes a respondent think it has less time than it does, or makes a claimant lodge an application before the window has opened. Keep them apart.
Calendar days, with a carve out
The SOP Act counts in calendar days, not working days. Weekends are in. The Act excludes public holidays from parts of the reckoning, so certain periods are extended where they would otherwise land on a gazetted holiday. Count calendar days as the default, and check whether the particular period is one from which public holidays are excluded before you fix a deadline.
When the clocks run out
If the respondent serves no valid payment response and the money is not paid by the due date, the claimant can move to adjudication under the SOP Act once the dispute settlement period has passed. The adjudicator works quickly, on the documents, and looks hard at the dates: when the claim was served, whether a response came in time, and whether the application was made in its window. A clean timeline is most of the case.
Diary the claim service date and count everything from it. Keep the response window, the due date and the seven day dispute period as three separate entries. The right you protect by counting correctly is the right to be paid.
QScope counts every SOP Act deadline from the claim service date in calendar days, and keeps the response window, the due date and the dispute period as three separate clocks so none is mistaken for another.