COCA releases prompt payment and adjudication toolkit (1)
The Council of Ontario Construction Associations (COCA) has released a series of resources designed to raise awareness about the province’s prompt payment and adjudication regime, which it says is under-used.
COCA announced the materials as part of an awareness campaign that it launched on April 3. The campaign includes 29 member organizations.
The group has created The Prompt Payment and Adjudication Toolkit, an online resource centre to help all parties to construction projects understand the rules.
COCA president Ian Cunningham says the construction industry is plagued by routine payment delays.
“Timely payment should be the norm in the construction industry like it is in every other sector,” he says. “Contractors deserve to be paid on time for work that they have completed. To ensure timely payment, they should make themselves aware of the prompt payment and adjudication guidelines and be ready before a dispute arises.”
Prompt payment legislates mandatory timelines for payment. Adjudication is a dispute resolution process that allows a contractor or subcontractor to enforce claims for payment in a more efficient and less expensive way than the previous method of going through the court system.
Unfortunately, says Cunningham, “only a small number of contractors are using the prompt payment and adjudication tools provided under the Construction Act to get paid. Most don’t know about this new process.”
The Prompt Payment and Adjudication Toolkit features downloadable documents with clear, concise information for owners, contractors and subcontractors. Prompt Payment Adjudication 101 provides an overview of the act in simplified terms, and there is information about holdbacks and proper invoicing
A prompt payment webinar can also be viewed and there are links to government resources.
The latest annual report data from Ontario Dispute Adjudication for Construction Contracts, the group responsible for administering construction-related adjudications and for training and qualifying adjudicators, finds an overall increase in the construction industry’s use of adjudication. The number of adjudications commenced grew from 50 in 2021 to 121 in 2022. In those cases, 67 determinations were rendered, compared with 34 in 2021.
Specifically, 121 adjudications were commenced (compared to 50 in 2021); 24 of the 121 adjudications were terminated; and 67 determinations were rendered (compared to 34 in 2021). Three quarters of those determinations were rendered within the 30-day timeline prescribed in the Construction Act.
Of the adjudications started in 2022, 43% involved the residential sector, 25% involved the transportation and infrastructure sector, 19% involved the commercial sector, 8% involved the public buildings sector, and 5% involved the industrial sector.