Notices land and nobody checks them

The certificate arrives, the number disappoints, and the job is too busy to do more than sigh and move on. Nobody asks the questions the contract would ask: did it arrive inside its window, does it state the basis it was calculated on, was it given by the right party, does the sum follow the contract's own rules. The paper is treated as a verdict when it is only a document, and documents can fail.

Under the Construction Act, a reply that fails the requirements for a valid notice may not count as one at all, and where no valid notice answers a valid application in time, the applied sum can become the sum that must be paid. Which means an invalid certificate accepted in silence can be money given away: the five-minute read against the contract, done inside the window while a challenge is still possible, is one of the best-paid disciplines in the month.