Ontario's construction payment regime compresses the timeline for responding to a payment dispute dramatically compared with traditional litigation or arbitration. The practical consequence for project teams is that the quality of contemporaneous records now determines outcomes far more than advocacy does.
In the files we support, the parties who fare best are those whose progress measurement, change registers and notice records were maintained as a matter of routine. Where records must be reconstructed, the adjudication window rarely allows enough time to do it properly.
Our recommendation is unchanged and increasingly urgent: build the records protocol into the project's operating system at mobilisation, not when a notice of adjudication arrives.
What we recommend
- Maintain statused schedule updates on a fixed monthly cycle, without exception.
- Keep a live change and delay event register traceable from occurrence to closure.
- Agree rules of credit for progress measurement before the first payment application.
Commentary prepared by Elite Analytics Inc. for general information. It is not legal advice.