Since August 29, 2022, getting paid on an Alberta construction job has run on statutory clocks. The Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act replaced the old Builders' Lien Act framework for new contracts, and it gives contractors real leverage: a 28-day payment deadline that starts the moment a proper invoice lands. The catch is the word proper. The deadlines only fire if your paperwork meets the Act's requirements, and the contractors collecting fastest under the new rules are the ones whose invoicing runs on rails. One thing to be clear about before anything else: this is practical operations guidance from a software studio, not legal advice. For a real dispute, or before restructuring your contracts, talk to a construction lawyer.
What Changed on August 29, 2022
Alberta's Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act (PPCLA) came into force on August 29, 2022, and applies to construction contracts and subcontracts entered into on or after that date, per the Government of Alberta's prompt payment guidance. It replaced the Builders' Lien Act framework for those contracts, and it did two big things: it put hard statutory deadlines on payment down the whole contract chain, and it created a fast adjudication process for payment disputes so they no longer have to wait for a courtroom.
The practical meaning for a contractor or sub is simple: slow payment is no longer just a relationship problem you absorb. There are dates, and the dates have consequences. But every one of those dates is triggered by paperwork done correctly, which is where most of the real-world friction lives.
The Proper Invoice Starts the Clock
The engine of the whole system is the proper invoice. Under the Act, once an owner receives one, they must pay within 28 calendar days. If the owner disputes some or all of it, they must issue a notice of dispute, in the prescribed form, within 14 calendar days, and pay any undisputed portion on time. Once a contractor gets paid, the money keeps moving: the contractor must pay its subcontractors within 7 calendar days of receiving payment, and the same obligation cascades down the chain, with a prescribed notice of non-payment required where money is being withheld.
But an invoice only starts the 28-day clock if it qualifies as proper, and the Act is specific about the contents, listed on Alberta.ca: your name and business address, the invoice date and the period the work covers, a description of the work or materials, the amount and payment terms, the name and contact of who to pay, and, easy to miss, an explicit statement that the invoice is intended to be a proper invoice under the Act. Miss required elements and you have sent a piece of paper, not a trigger. Every month your invoice goes out late or incomplete, you are voluntarily extending your own payment terms.
- Owner pays a proper invoice: within 28 calendar days
- Owner disputing: notice of dispute within 14 calendar days, undisputed amounts still due
- Contractor pays subs: within 7 calendar days of being paid, cascading down the chain
- Withholding from a sub requires a prescribed notice of non-payment
Holdbacks and Lien Deadlines
The holdback system continues under the PPCLA: 10% of each payment is retained as the lien fund that protects everyone below you in the chain, split by the Act into a major lien fund before the certificate of substantial performance and a minor lien fund after it. One genuinely useful change for cash flow on big work: for contracts over $10 million with a schedule longer than a year, holdback must be released annually, or on a phased basis if the contract provides for it, instead of sitting locked up until the end.
Lien deadlines also moved. The general period to register a lien went from 45 days to 60 days, and work primarily related to furnishing concrete gets 90 days. Longer windows are friendlier to trades, but a deadline you are not tracking is a deadline you miss regardless of length. If you have ever discovered a short-paid invoice 70 days later, you already know how a lien right quietly expires.
Adjudication: The Fast Lane for Payment Disputes
Before the PPCLA, a payment dispute meant a lien, lawyers, and months or years. The Act added adjudication: a party to a contract can refer a payment dispute to a certified adjudicator, appointed through Alberta's authorized nominating bodies (ARCANA and ADACC, per Alberta.ca), who decides the dispute on written submissions within a short legislated timeframe. Once a notice of adjudication is issued, the other party is in the process whether they enjoy it or not.
For a smaller contractor, the leverage is not that you will adjudicate constantly. It is that a slow payer knows you can, and that your paperwork would hold up if you did. Which loops back to the operational point: adjudication runs on documents. Invoices, notices, dates received, amounts disputed. The party with the clean record has the easy case. And, again: deciding whether and how to adjudicate a real dispute is a lawyer conversation, not a blog decision.
The Ops Side: Put the Deadlines on Rails
Everything above is a deadline or a document, and deadlines and documents are exactly what software is good at. This is the part we can speak to directly, because it is what we build. A proper-invoice template with every required element baked in, including the intended-to-be-a-proper-invoice statement, so nothing goes out incomplete. Invoices generated from job data instead of retyped, so they go out the day the billing period closes rather than whenever the evening frees up. A dashboard that stamps the date each invoice was delivered and counts down the 28 days, flags day 14 when the dispute window closes, and schedules the polite follow-up before the deadline rather than the annoyed one after it.
Under the surface, the same system tracks what the Act makes you track anyway: the 10% holdback ledger per project, lien deadline countdowns, and the paper trail of who was paid what and when, which is precisely the record that wins an adjudication or makes one unnecessary. None of this replaces a lawyer when a dispute turns real. What it does is make sure you never lose money to the avoidable failure mode: rights you had, on paperwork you fumbled, against deadlines nobody was counting.