Progress Payment Rules Under the BWC Act in SA

What it is

South Australia does not give builders a payment schedule. It gives them a prohibition.

Section 30 of the Building Work Contractors Act 1995 (SA) makes it an offence to demand or require a payment under a domestic building work contract unless the payment falls into a narrow list. There is no prescribed stage table, no percentage at slab, no percentage at lock-up. The Act simply says the money must follow the work.

That inversion is the whole SA rule, and builders who arrive from the eastern states usually miss it.

No money before work

Under s30(1) a person must not demand or require a payment under a domestic building work contract or a preliminary work contract unless the payment is either a genuine progress payment in respect of work already performed, or an entitlement under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2009 (SA).

The maximum penalty is $100,000 for a natural person and $500,000 for a body corporate. That is double the section 28 penalty for a defective contract, which tells you how the legislature ranks the two.

Note the two words that do the work. "Genuine" defeats a front-loaded claim dressed up as a stage payment. "Already performed" defeats claiming ahead of the work. A claim for a stage you have started but not finished is not a genuine progress payment for work already performed.

Section 30(2) then reverses the onus. If it is proved that the builder received a payment outside the permitted categories, the builder is presumed to have demanded it unless the builder proves otherwise. The builder carries the burden.

The advance payments SA does allow

Section 30(2a) adds a second offence: a builder must not demand a payment unless it is a prescribed payment. Section 30(4) defines that term, and the list is short:

• a payment to a third party for engineering, drawing, surveying or other professional services
• a payment reimbursing the cost of building indemnity insurance, or a fee required to be paid under an Act for the work
• the deposit
• anything else prescribed by regulation

Regulation 17 of the Building Work Contractors Regulations 2011 still carries a version of that list, but it is expressed for the purposes of section 30(1)(b), a paragraph Act 68 of 2025 deleted on 15 January 2026. The operative source is now section 30(4) of the Act. So an SA builder can take money up front for the engineer, the surveyor, the drawings, the insurance premium and the council fee. That is the entire universe of lawful advance money. A general "mobilisation payment" or an early materials call is not on the list.

Section 30(2a) carries the same $100,000 and $500,000 maximums, plus a $5,000 expiation fee.

The written demand rule

Section 30(3) is the one builders forget. The owner is not obliged to make a progress payment unless the builder has requested it by notice in writing given to the owner or their authorised agent.

No invoice, no obligation. A verbal request for money creates no debt, so the clock on late payment never starts and interest never accrues. CBS states the same rule in its consumer guidance: the builder must ask in writing, and cannot ask for payments in advance for work that is not substantially complete.

The exception in s30(3)(b) is a contract to which the Security of Payment Act applies, in which case that Act's progress payment provisions govern instead.

Deposits sit inside the same section

The deposit is a prescribed payment under s30(4)(d), not a separate regime. The cap turns on the contract price: $1,000 where the price is less than $20,000, and 5 per cent of the price where the price is $20,000 or more. Note that a contract at exactly $20,000 takes the 5 per cent cap, not the $1,000 one. The detail lives in the deposit entry for SA.

Where a schedule goes wrong

A progress payment schedule that front-loads is not merely unenforceable in SA. It is evidence of an offence, because demanding the payment is the offence whether or not the owner pays.

The second consequence is worse. Section 30 sits in Part 5 Division 1. Under s36(5)(b), a failure to comply with any Division 1 requirement keeps the owner's right to terminate open until the work is finished. An unlawful claim on the first invoice can still be handing the owner an exit clause in month ten.

Build the schedule off completed work, put every claim in writing and keep advance money inside the s30(4) list.