I applied for payment but the money hasn't come
My application went in on time, the due date has passed, and the account is still short.
What's happening?
You did your part. The application was measured, priced and served the way the contract asks, and then the machine on the other side went quiet. Perhaps a certificate arrived for less with no real explanation, perhaps nothing arrived at all. Meanwhile your own suppliers and wage bill do not wait, so the shortfall lands on you, not on the payer who caused it.
Here is what most payees in this position do not realise: under the Construction Act, silence has consequences for the payer, not for you. Where your application was itself valid and the payer sent neither of the two written replies the Act allows, a Payment Notice or a Pay Less Notice, in time, the sum you applied for can become what the Act calls the Notified Sum: the figure the law then requires them to pay in full. What looks like a stalled invoice can be a payment entitlement waiting to be enforced.
The facts decide which it is: what the contract says about dates, what was served, when, and by whom. That is paperwork you already hold.
The solution
The route out is built on the paperwork you already hold.
A discussion of the payment position comes first. Adjudication is one possible route, not an automatic next step.