Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group v Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd;... [2026] NSWSC 940 | Case summary | Zoe

NSWNSWSC

Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group v Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd; Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd v Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group

[2026] NSWSC 940

Supreme Court of NSW|2026-08-06|Before: Hmelnitsky J

View on NSW Caselaw

At a glance

Source facts

Court

Supreme Court of NSW

Decision date

2026-08-06

Before

Hmelnitsky J

Catchwords

BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION — Adjudication — Judicial review — Where defendant brought payment claim against plaintiff under Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (Act) — Where adjudicator made determinations on payment claim — Where adjudicator decided that payment claim was served within time per s 13(4)(b) of the Act — Whether adjudicator fell into jurisdictional error in his application of s 13(4)(b) — Whether error was material — Whether order in the nature of mandamus is an appropriate form of relief

Source

Original judgment source is linked above.

Catchwords

BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION — Adjudication — Judicial review — Where defendant brought payment claim against plaintiff under Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (Act) — Where adjudicator made determinations on payment claim — Where adjudicator decided that payment claim was served within time per s 13(4)(b) of the Act — Whether adjudicator fell into jurisdictional error in his application of s 13(4)(b) — Whether error was material — Whether order in the nature of mandamus is an appropriate form of relief

Judgment

Source: NSW Caselaw (www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au). Converted to plain text by ZoeLaw. Not the official version.

Medium Neutral Citation: Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group v Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd; Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd v Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group [2026] NSWSC 940

Hearing dates: 27 July 2026

Date of orders: 06 August 2026

Decision date: 06 August 2026

Jurisdiction: Equity - Technology and Construction List

Before: Hmelnitsky J

Decision: (1) Summons dismissed.
(2) Cross-summons dismissed.
(3) The plaintiff is to pay the first defendant’s costs as agreed or assessed.
(4) The first cross-defendant is to pay the cross-claimant’s costs as agreed or assessed.
(5) Direct the parties to bring in short minutes of order by 4:00PM on 13 August 2026 dealing with the funds paid into Court pursuant to the order made on 19 March 2026.

Catchwords: BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION — Adjudication — Judicial review — Where defendant brought payment claim against plaintiff under Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (Act) — Where adjudicator made determinations on payment claim — Where adjudicator decided that payment claim was served within time per s 13(4)(b) of the Act — Whether adjudicator fell into jurisdictional error in his application of s 13(4)(b) — Whether error was material — Whether order in the nature of mandamus is an appropriate form of relief

The plaintiff, Reward Interiors Pty Ltd (Reward), was a contractor for some refurbishment works at the Sofitel Wentworth Hotel at 101 Phillip Street, Sydney. In June 2024, Reward engaged the first defendant, Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd (Stream Line), as a subcontractor to ‘supply, manufacture and install’ some joinery for the refurbishment.
On 30 September 2025, Stream Line issued a payment claim under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (the Act) for an amount of $136,106.03 including GST. It lodged an adjudication application on 28 October 2025 with the third defendant, Adjudicate Today Pty Limited (Adjudicate Today), which is an adjudication agency. By its adjudication response, Reward contended (among other things) that ‘all works under the contract’ had been completed by 25 September 2024 and that Stream Line had ‘last carried out construction work to which the claim relates on 25 September 2024’.
It followed, in Reward’s contention, that the payment claim was brought outside the 12-month period for which s 13(4) of the Act provided.
On 18 November 2025, the second defendant (the Adjudicator) made a determination (the First Determination) in which he found that the amount payable to Stream Line by Reward was the amount claimed, being $136,106.03. He specifically rejected Reward’s challenge to jurisdiction based on s 13(4). In so doing, he rejected Reward’s evidence that the final joinery installation work had taken place on 25 September 2024. He instead accepted Stream Line’s evidence that the final installation work had taken place on 1 October 2024 and that certain remediation work had taken place on 9 October 2024.
The Adjudicator made a further determination on 2 December 2025 (the Second Determination) whereby a small correction was made to the First Determination. Nothing turns on the difference between the two determinations (the Determinations) in these proceedings.
Reward contends that the Adjudicator misdirected himself as to the applicable law in determining the s 13(4) point. It contends that the Adjudicator thereby fell into jurisdictional error and that the Court should make a declaration that the Determinations are void and of no effect.
Stream Line disputes that the Adjudicator made the asserted error. It says that even if he did, the error was not material having regard to the Adjudicator’s factual findings about when the installation work under the contract was completed, namely that it occurred on 1 October 2024, as Stream Line had contended, not on 25 September 2024, as Reward had contended. By cross-summons, Stream Line contends in the alternative that the matter should be remitted to the Adjudicator to determine the s 13(4) question according to law.

The whole of the Adjudicator’s reasoning in relation to the s 13(4) point is reproduced at paragraph [29] above. I will refer to parts of that passage as D6, D7 and so on, corresponding to the paragraph number.
Reward contends that the Adjudicator’s statement of the test in D9 was erroneous and that the error is apparent not only from the way in which the test was formulated but from the way in which it was applied. Reward draws attention to the statement in D8 that Mr Donohue’s evidence ‘cannot be applied to the relevant legal test’, to the statement in D9 that the test is ‘therefore significantly broader than the reach of’ Reward’s evidence on this point’ and, most especially, to the statement in D12 that Reward had not rebutted Stream Line’s assertion that it performed ‘construction work’ within the meaning of the Act on 1 and 9 October 2024. It submits that these statements reveal the Adjudicator’s understanding of the relevant legal question, namely that it did not turn on evidence of when Stream Line had performed the work described in the Payment Claim, but rather on when Stream Line had performed any construction work even loosely related to the Payment Claim.
Reward also stressed that the finding in D12 was not that the construction work performed on 1 and 9 October 2024 was work to which the Payment Claim related but that it was ‘construction work’ within the meaning of the Act. Thus, when the Adjudicator said in D12 that 9 October 2024 was the relevant date for determining the final date on which a payment claim may be served under s 13(4)(b), he must mistakenly have been referring to the last date on which any construction work under the Contract (or, perhaps, construction work loosely related to the Payment Claim) was performed instead of the last date on which work being claimed for payment was carried out.
Reward thus contends that the Adjudicator fell into a similar error to that identified by Williams J in EQ Constructions Pty Ltd v A-Civil Aust Pty Ltd [2021] NSWSC 1604 (‘EQ Constructions’) and by the Court of Appeal in Estate Property Holdings Pty Ltd v Barclay Mowlem Construction Pty Ltd (2004) 61 NSWLR 515; [2004] NSWCA 393 (‘Estate Property’). It contends that the Adjudicator should have asked himself when ‘any work to which the payment claim relates’ was last performed. Instead, as the foregoing aspects of his reasoning disclose, he asked himself when ‘any construction work’ was last performed. This, Reward contends, is especially apparent from the fact that the Adjudicator attached significance to the remediation works done on 9 October 2024 because those works cannot conceivably (so Reward submits) have been works to which the Payment Claim related. The work done on 9 October could only have been material on an incorrect understanding of the s 13(4) question.
Stream Line submits that the Adjudicator stated and applied the correct legal test. It says that D9 disclosed a correct understanding of s 13(4)(b), in line with the Court of Appeal’s explanation of that provision in Estate Property. On Stream Line’s reading of the Determinations, the Adjudicator accepted at D11 the evidence of Mr Plesa that work was completed on 1 and 9 October 2024, and then noted at D12 that Reward had not presented anything in the Adjudication Response to rebut this evidence. On the basis of these factual findings, he determined that the work performed on 1 and 9 October was work to which the claim related, in circumstances where the Payment Claim was for the ‘balance of [the] joinery package’ including retention.
Stream Line says that the Determinations should not be read with an ‘overcritical or pedantic eye but should be viewed with common sense and without undue legality’: CPB Contractors Pty Limited v Heyday5 Pty Limited [2020] NSWSC 1625 at [35] (Hammerschlag J).
Although I consider the matter to be quite finely balanced, I am not persuaded that the Adjudicator made the error attributed to him. I will explain below my reasons for reaching that conclusion. It is first however appropriate to identify the question which the Adjudicator was required to ask himself.
Section 13(4) is set out at paragraph [39] above. In Estate Property, Hodgson JA (Mason P and Giles JA agreeing) rejected the primary judge’s interpretation of s 13(4)(b) as requiring that only ‘some work under the construction contract’ had to be performed in the 12-month period and held at [17]-[18]:

It follows that the question which the Adjudicator was required to determine was whether any of the work for which payment was claimed was performed during the 12-month period preceding the Payment Claim.
It is also important to appreciate the material that was before the Adjudicator on this issue.
The issue about s 13(4) arose late in the piece, at least by the standards of the incredibly short timelines prescribed by the Act. The Payment Claim had sought payment for the ‘[b]alance of joinery package as set out in the attached breakdown’. The attached breakdown identified all of the items described in the Contract including three banquettes to be installed on level 5 of the hotel. The banquettes were identified as ‘J5.54’, which was how they were referred to in the Contract itself. The breakdown attached to the Payment Claim set out the total of all items, which corresponded to the total contract amount including retention, and then made deductions for invoices paid. It then identified the balance to be paid excluding GST but including retention of $123,732.75. The Payment Claim was therefore a final claim for the value of all work under the Contract, less only those amounts that had been invoiced and paid.
The Payment Schedule made no mention of the s 13(4) issue. It did however assert Reward’s claim for liquidated damages under the Contract and some other grounds for withholding payment. The liquidated damages were for asserted delay on the part of Stream Line.
In Mr Plesa’s statutory declaration, he responded to the liquidated damages claim. In the course of explaining the delay, he said that the banquette seating had been installed on 1 October 2024 and that 1 October was ‘completion date’. He exhibited a photograph showing that the banquette seating was not completely installed prior to 1 October 2024, which photograph is reproduced at paragraph [19] above. He also said that Stream Line had completed some remediation work on 9 October 2024 and exhibited photographs of the banquettes during the remediation work.
The Adjudication Response was the first time the s 13(4) issue had been raised. The Adjudication Response took the issue up in the way described at paragraphs [22] to [27] above, relying on Mr Donohue’s statutory declaration, some correspondence within Reward and messages from the Site Manager.
It was in this context that the Adjudicator came to the s 13(4) question. The factual issue that had been identified was whether the installation works had been completed on 25 September 2024 as Reward asserted or whether they had been completed on 1 October 2024 as Stream Line asserted. On any view, the final installation of the banquettes was work for which payment was claimed. This was not a case in which the claimant was seeking to rely on ‘construction work’ done during the preceding 12-month period that was not work for which payment was claimed.
What, then, is to be made of the first sentence of D9? That sentence said that:

As Mr Thompson, who appeared for Reward, accepted, the test which the Adjudicator was asserting in the second clause of this sentence is drawn directly from the Act. It is not a complete statement of the provision, but it is not wrong so far as it goes. At the same time, the test which the Adjudicator rejected in the first clause – which I infer is the test he believed he was being asked to adopt by Reward – is most certainly not the correct test. It is not necessary for a claimant to show that ‘the work being claimed for payment’ was carried out in the preceding 12-month period, it is only necessary to show that ‘any’ of the construction work to which the claim relates was carried out in that period.
In my view, the Adjudicator’s point was that Reward was wrong to suggest that ‘the work’ (that is, all of the work) had to be performed in the 12 months preceding the Payment Claim.
Reward resisted this characterisation of D9 on the basis that that is not what Reward had argued in its Adjudication Response. But in fairness to the Adjudicator, Reward had done nothing more than assert that Stream Line ‘last carried out construction work to which the claim relates on 25 September 2024’. It was open to the Adjudicator to understand Reward’s argument to be that all of the work had to be carried out within the 12-month period, not just ‘any’ of it.
When the reasons are read as a whole in the light of the limited material with which the Adjudicator was presented on this issue, I think it is unlikely that he was adopting a test akin to that which was rejected in Estate Property. The more likely explanation for what he said at D9 is that he somewhat misapprehended the character of Reward’s objection to jurisdiction. As Payne JA (Gleeson JA and Griffiths AJA agreeing) similarly concluded in Martinus Rail Pty Ltd v Qube RE Services (No 2) Pty Ltd [2025] NSWCA 49 at [101], it may well be the case that the Adjudicator misunderstood the submission made to him, but it does not follow that he fell into jurisdictional error.
Reward submitted that the balance of the Adjudicator’s reasons on this issue only compound the sense that he had adopted an erroneous construction. In particular, Reward pointed to D12 where the Adjudicator found that ‘construction work’ within the meaning of the Act had been carried out on 1 and 9 October 2024. Reward submitted that this showed that the Adjudicator believed the question not to be when work described in the Payment Claim was performed but when any construction work which was loosely ‘related to’ the claim, including rectification works, was performed.
There is force in this aspect of Reward’s argument but I am unable to accept it for two reasons. First, the Adjudicator had made very clear at D9 that the only relevant ‘construction work’ for the purposes of s 13(4) was ‘construction work to which the claim relates’ and, on any view of the material before him, the installation of the banquettes on 1 October met that description. I read his reference to ‘construction work’ in D12 accordingly, namely that he meant ‘construction work to which the claim relates’.
Secondly, although the Adjudicator found that the defect rectification undertaken on 9 October was relevant to the s 13(4) issue and although this aspect of the Adjudicator’s reasoning is somewhat troubling, it was open to him to find that this was construction work described in the Payment Claim because the claim was for the ‘balance’ of all work under the Contract. I do accept that defect rectification is work that ordinarily would not be the subject of a payment claim. However, if the Adjudicator was wrong about this, it was not a jurisdictional error. It would be ‘an erroneous finding about the question posited by s 13(4)(b)’ and would not constitute jurisdictional error: EQ Constructions at [79].
In my view, D12 shows that the Adjudicator accepted Stream Line’s contention that ‘any’ of the construction work to which the Payment Claim related was carried out within 12 months preceding service of the Payment Claim, albeit that he may well have been mistaken about whether the 9 October work was of that character.

Had it been necessary to consider this issue, I would have found that the error in this case was not material. That is because, on the facts found by the Adjudicator, the installation of the banquettes was completed on 1 October 2024, not 25 September 2024.
Reward submitted that the finding about the completion of the banquette installation could not be relied upon because it was arrived at by way of the wrong test. I cannot accept that submission. The factual question for the Adjudicator was entirely straightforward: was the banquette installation completed on 25 September 2024 as claimed by Reward, or was it completed on 1 October 2024 as claimed by Stream Line? The resolution of that issue did not to any degree depend on the correct statement of the s 13(4) test. To the contrary, it was an anterior factual question which was required to be determined before the s 13(4) test could be applied.
The finding by the Adjudicator that the banquette installation was completed on 1 October 2024 is fatal to Reward’s case because that work was work to which the Payment Claim related. Reward’s case before the Adjudicator depended entirely on the proposition that the work was completed on 25 September.
The threshold here is low: could the decision-maker realistically have reached a different conclusion if he had asked himself the correct question? Having found that installation was completed on 1 October 2024, I do not consider that he could. There was no suggestion that the final installation of the banquettes was anything other than work to which the Payment Claim related. As already mentioned, the banquettes were included in the breakdown attached to the Payment Claim. Given the Adjudicator’s conclusion that this work was undertaken on 1 October, it is unrealistic to suppose that he would have reached any different conclusion than the one he did. In the words of the Court in LPDT at [16], that factual finding is a ‘basis on which it can be affirmatively concluded that the outcome would inevitably have been the same had the error not been made’. In my view, even if the Adjudicator did misapprehend the s 13(4) question, he could not realistically have reached any different conclusion by applying the correct test.

These conclusions make it strictly unnecessary to consider the question of whether it would have been appropriate to grant the relief sought in the summons or whether it would instead have been appropriate to grant relief in the nature of mandamus, as sought in the cross-summons. However, because the matter was fully argued, I will at least indicate the conclusions I would likely have reached on this issue.
The consequence of finding that an adjudicator’s determination is affected by jurisdictional error is that there is ‘no decision at all’ (Hossain at [24], Kiefel CJ, Gageler and Keane JJ) and that the decision-maker’s statutory function remains undischarged: Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v Bhardwaj (2002) 209 CLR 597; [2002] HCA 11 at [53] (Gaudron and Gummow JJ). Reward did not dispute that where that is the case, the Court has the power to make an order in the nature of mandamus requiring the adjudicator to perform his or her function under the Act according to law: see Tackelly No 8 Pty Ltd v Reward Interiors Pty Ltd (t/as Reward Group) [2025] NSWSC 300 (‘Tackelly No 8’) at [116] (Peden J); Builtcom Construction Pty Ltd v VSD Investments Pty Ltd [2025] NSWSC 250 (‘Builtcom’) at [84] (Peden J) and the authorities cited therein. The dispute, rather, was as to whether such an order should be made in the exercise of the Court’s discretion.
Reward submitted that it was generally inappropriate for an order in the nature of mandamus (or as framed in the cross-summons, an order for ‘remittal’) to be made under the Act. It submitted that such an order would significantly prolong the process of dispute resolution for which the Act provides and that it would therefore not be a ‘just, quick and cheap’ outcome for the parties. Reward submitted that Stream Line has an adequate alternative remedy in the form of court proceedings to resolve the parties’ substantive contract dispute, or otherwise that it could lodge an adjudication application afresh under s 26(2)(b) of the Act.
Reward also submitted that to the extent the question had been considered in the context of the NSW legislation, the Court has tended against the making of such an order. It referred me to Tackelly No 8 in which Peden J declined to order relief in the form of mandamus: at [117]-[123]. In that case, her Honour was of the view that civil litigation was a ‘more satisfactory remedy, particularly in circumstances where the contract is at an end’: at [122]. I was also referred to Builtcom, where her Honour expressed a similar view in obiter: at [84]-[85].
On the other hand, I note that orders in the nature of mandamus have been made in the context of the analogous Victorian and Queensland legislation. In Queensland, orders to remit adjudication applications for determination have been made under s 101(3)(b) of the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) (the Queensland Act). Section 101(3)(b) is relevantly identical to s 32(3)(b) of the Act.
In Procon Developments (Australia) Pty Ltd v Hi-Cal Bricklaying [2025] QSC 67, Bowskill CJ made an order that the application be remitted and that the timeframes under the Queensland Act would follow from the date of remittal: see [43]-[45]. Her Honour envisaged that a different adjudicator would determine the matter.
In Tomkins Commercial & Industrial Builders Pty Ltd v Starline Interiors Pty Ltd [2026] QSC 21, Muir J made an order that the application be remitted to the same adjudicator and that the time limits would run from the date the adjudicator was given notice of the order. In making that order, her Honour specifically addressed an argument that remitter would upset the ‘mandatory and jurisdictional time requirements in sections 85 and 86 of the [Queensland] Act through the use of legal fictions’: see [45]. This was essentially the same as one of the arguments put to me, namely that an order for remittal would prolong the dispute and be inconsistent with the very strict time limits set by the Act.
Muir J rejected this argument. At [46], her Honour said:

In my view, there is force in this reasoning.
I also tend to doubt that the ability to sue a head contractor for damages under the contract represents an adequate alternative remedy for what the Act provides. The right to receive an interim progress payment under the Act is not in the nature of a right to sue for damages for breach of contract, nor does it represent the enforcement of the contract: Brodyn Pty Ltd (t/a Time Cost & Quality) v Davenport (2004) 61 NSWLR 421; [2004] NSWCA 394 at [82] (Hodgson JA, Mason P and Giles JA agreeing); Probuild at [38]. Although the ability to sue on the contract is undoubtedly an alternative to pursuing rights under the Act, and although it is a matter to be taken into account in determining whether to make an order in the nature of mandamus, it is not in my view something that amounts to an adequate alternative remedy of the kind envisioned by Dixon CJ in Tooth & Co Ltd v Council of the City of Parramatta (1955) 97 CLR 492; [1955] HCA 21 at 498, where his Honour spoke of a statutory appeal as being ‘an equally convenient, beneficial, effective and appropriate remedy’ to prerogative relief: see also Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Futuris Corporation Ltd (2008) 237 CLR 146; [2008] HCA 32 at [91]-[92] (Kirby J). In this regard, I bear in mind that the raison d’ê**tre of the Act is to create an entitlement to interim payment that is ‘determined informally, summarily and quickly, and then summarily enforced without prejudice to the common law rights of both parties’: Probuild at [44]; s 32 of the Act.
I am also not inclined to attach much significance in the context of the present dispute to the fact that the Contract is now at an end. The legislation does not seem to me to draw any particular distinction between progress payments to which a claimant is entitled while the contract is still being performed and those to which they may be entitled on completion of the contract. The definition of ‘progress payment’ in s 4 of the Act expressly includes ‘the final payment for construction work carried out … under a construction contract’. That is not to say that the completion of the Contract is irrelevant. It may well be that in the ordinary run of cases, disputes about completed contracts can and should be pursued through the courts in the usual way. Here, however, Stream Line was brought on late in a project to perform work on short notice and is yet to be paid a significant portion of the Contract sum.
I would also have been unwilling to accept the proposition that it would not be ‘just, quick and cheap’ to remit the matter to the Adjudicator. I would not have accepted that the more ‘just, quick and cheap’ resolution of the dispute between these parties was all-out civil litigation as opposed to a fresh determination of the parties’ rights under the Act by the Adjudicator. In any event, the notion of what is ‘just, quick and cheap’ (s 56 of the Civil Procedure Act) will ordinarily have little bearing on whether a final order in the nature of mandamus should be made in the Court’s discretion.
Reward also submitted that an order in the nature of mandamus may be appropriate in the case of a tribunal or court but was inappropriate in the case of an individual such as the Adjudicator who may or may not be able to comply with the timelines, which would necessarily have to run again. However, I note that the Adjudicator is a party to the proceedings and that the relief sought in the cross-summons is directed to him. He has filed a submitting appearance. In these circumstances I would not have attached any weight to Reward’s submission on this point.
Had it been necessary to decide the point, I would therefore have been inclined to order the Adjudicator to determine the application according to law.

Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group v Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd; Stream Line Joinery Pty Ltd v Reward Interiors Pty Ltd t/as Reward Group

At a glance

Court

Decision date

Before

Catchwords

Source

Catchwords

Judgment

JUDGMENT

The facts in more detail

The adjudication process

The First Determination

The Second Determination

The issues in dispute

The Act – Relevant provisions

Were the Determinations affected by error?

Materiality

Does the materiality threshold apply?

Was the error material?

Relief

ORDERS

Legislation Cited (6)

Cases Cited (32)