What To Do If You’re Not Getting Paid

Getting paid could be the most difficult part of performing construction work. It doesn’t make sense that this is actually harder than the construction work itself, but often, and perhaps unfortunately, this could be the case. Not getting paid on time can be devastating to construction companies that have costs to vendors and employees that sometimes require payment weekly. Cash flow problems can send a company into a hole from the which they will often not recover.

Owners can always think of a reason not to pay. Usually, it has something to do with the paperwork not being submitted properly or some small detail that wasn’t perfect in the submission of the payment application. Of course the real reason owners don’t pay is either because they don’t have the money or they would rather allocate that money to others that may be more important at that time.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to get paid, and I have yet to come up with a good way of getting it done. Of course you could always stop work, but then that usually just makes an owner more angry with the contractor than they already are. So what typically happens is that the end of the project is reached and a large sum of money is left outstanding. The owner will then try to make a settlement for less than half of that amount. This is a brutal game, that I would suggest trying to avoid. If you must stop work in order to avoid this situation, it may be the best option.

The bottom line, unfortunately, is that I do not know the best way get paid and I’m more than open to hear opinions from anyone that does. Owners hold all the cards in the construction process and if they don’t want to pay, there is little stopping them from doing so. The best option is to probably work with owners that you know have sufficient funds, and better yet, have a history of paying their contractors. But of course, this is rarely the case.