Adjudication in Australia: A Study of Adjudication Activity in New South Wales for 2013/14

The Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (the NSW Act) is a unique form of statutory regulation for the building and construction industry, which gives virtually all industry participants a statutory right to, and a means of recovering, payments for work done under a construction contract. The research aim is to examine current trends in adjudication applications and determinations under the NSW Act. The data used for this study was the collected by the NSW Office of Finance & Services as part of a regular reporting regime for the period from 1 July 2013 and ending on 30 June 2014. With just over 817 adjudication applications having been made over the 2013/14 period, the data indicates that adjudication is being frequently utilized by stakeholders in the NSW building and construction industry as a means of progress payment recovery. Adjudication is proving to be a popular choice for those making claims of less than AU$250,000. Claimants were awarded about 36% of the total of claimed amounts and claimants are generally successful at adjudication in terms of the proportion of the claimed amounts determined in their favour. This is particularly so in relation to claims of less than $100,000, which represents about 70% of the total applications made over the reporting period. The data indicates that adjudication fees are generally modest enough to conclude that adjudication provides claimants across all claim ranges with a relatively inexpensive means of having disputed progress payments determined by an independent adjudicator.