Once a month on a JBCC job, one sheet of paper decides what you are paid. You don’t write it. The principal agent issues it, usually off a valuation by the quantity surveyor, and it is almost always less than you asked for.
Some of that difference is fair and some of it isn’t. Knowing how the certificate is built is how you tell which is which, early enough to do something about it.
Who does what, and when
Under the Principal Building Agreement the cycle runs like this, according to JBCC’s own guide to completion and payment:
- The work is valued. You provide a valuation of the work done; where a quantity surveyor is appointed, the QS values it and the principal agent checks it. It is meant to be a reasonable estimate of the work executed, not proof that every item is finished.
- The certificate is issued once a month, by the date set in the contract data, together with a recovery statement.
- The employer pays within fourteen calendar days of the date the certificate is issued. That is the default: the contract data can set a longer period, and public-sector jobs often do.
- You pay your nominated and selected subcontractors within twenty-one calendar days of that same certificate, whether or not you have been paid yet.
- Late payment carries default interest.
Those periods are the PBA’s. The Minor Works Agreement and the Small and Simple Works Contract run on their own clauses, and every JBCC payment certificate carries its own payment due date. That date, not the day the certificate was signed, is when the money is owed.
What is on it
JBCC’s free PBA payment certificate works the calculation down the page. In plain words, these are the lines that move your money:
| Line on the certificate | What it means, and what to check |
|---|---|
| Value of work executed | Everything built to date, valued at contract rates. Check it against your own measure, line by line. |
| Materials on and off site | Paid only if the contract data says so. If it does, list the materials with your valuation. |
| Security adjustment | The payment reduction, if your contract runs one: 5% under the PBA’s fixed security. On the Small and Simple Works Contract this line is retention. |
| Authorised adjustments | Variations and other changes that went through a contract instruction. A change you made on a word will not be here. |
| Cost fluctuations | Price adjustment for inflation, where the contract provides for it. |
| Less previous certificates | Certificates are cumulative: each one values the whole job to date and deducts everything already certified. |
| Penalties, expense and loss | Amounts the employer recovers, such as penalties for late completion. Damages owed to you are added in the same block. |
| Tax | VAT, added on the subtotal. |
| Interest and advance payments | Default interest either way, and an advance payment being paid back. Shown separately because they carry no VAT. |
| Amount due | The number payable, to whom, and by which date. |
Underneath, the certificate records how much of the contract value has been certified so far and whether practical or final completion has been reached, because both change how security behaves.
Why it is less than you claimed
Most gaps between your claim and the certificate come from five places, and only the first is a matter of opinion:
- Measurement. Work you count as done, the QS counts as partly done. Agree the measure on site, with photographs, before the valuation date.
- Unrecorded variations. No contract instruction, no authorised adjustment. Get it in writing before the work starts.
- Materials on site that the contract data doesn’t pay for.
- Security. The payment reduction on a job that runs one (5% under the PBA’s fixed security), which belongs in your cash flow from day one. When it comes back.
- Recoveries. Penalties and other amounts carried over from the recovery statement.
Reconcile every certificate against your own claim the day it arrives, line by line, and put the differences in writing before the next valuation. A difference raised in month three is a conversation. The same difference raised at final account is a dispute.
Once it is signed, it is owed
South African courts treat a signed payment certificate much like a cheque: the employer can challenge it only on narrow grounds, such as fraud. In a Gauteng High Court case written up by the law firm Adams & Adams in 2024, a contractor was awarded about R7 million in unpaid interim certificates, and the court held that an employer who thought the work was over-certified should sue its principal agent or QS, not refuse to pay.
So if a certificate passes its due date unpaid, default interest is running and the certificate is your strongest document. Before you slow down or stop work, speak to a construction attorney: the agreement sets out the notices you must give first, and getting them wrong can make you the party in breach.
The final certificate
Under the PBA the principal agent prepares the final account within sixty working days of practical completion (thirty under the MWA). The final payment certificate follows final completion and agreement of the final account, and at least three interim certificates must come before it. If either drags on, interim certificates keep being issued for the work nobody disputes, so payment doesn’t simply stop.
Getting the form
JBCC publishes free payment certificates for the PBA, the MWA and the SSWC, a payment advice for subcontracts, and the recovery statements and completion certificates that go with them, on its free forms page. They were drawn up for the 2018 editions, so if your agreement is a 2024 edition, check that the form matches it. The certificate is the principal agent’s document. What you need alongside it is your own record of what you claimed, what was certified and what was paid on every line, so you can check one against the other.
This follows the Principal Building Agreement’s payment process as JBCC’s own guide describes it for Edition 6.2. It is general information, not legal advice, and it doesn’t reproduce JBCC’s text. The periods are defaults; your signed agreement, its contract data and any amendments govern.
Sources: JBCC, Guide to completion and payment (PBA Edition 6.2); JBCC, PBA payment certificate (free form); Adams & Adams, Little wiggle room: the power of payment certificates in construction contracts (August 2024).