H P CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING PTE LTD v MEGA TEAM ENGINEERING PTE. LTD.

15 February 2024

H P Construction & Engineering Pte Ltd v Mega Team Engineering Pte Ltd [2024] SGHC(A) 5

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1 The appellant, H P Construction & Engineering Pte Ltd (“HP”), engaged the respondent, Mega Team Engineering Pte Ltd (“MT”), to supply labour under a sub-contract in relation to a building and construction project.

2 MT submitted a payment claim to HP on 30 May 2023. HP was to provide a payment response by 20 June 2023 but failed to do so. Under s 12(6) of the SOPA, there is a seven-day dispute settlement period which was from 21 June to 27 June 2023. There was still no payment response from HP by 27 June 2023. MT lodged an adjudication application on 6 July 2023 under s 13 of the SOPA and the adjudicator issued his determination on 21 August 2023.

3 HP then filed an application in HC/OA 867/2023 on 28 August 2023 to set aside the adjudication determination on two grounds. HP’s application was dismissed by a judge of the General Division of the High Court on 9 October 2023. This appeal by HP focused on one ground only, ie, that the adjudication application should have been lodged by 5 July 2023 and the actual lodgement date of 6 July 2023 was one day late.

4 Section 13(3)(a) of the SOPA provides that an adjudication application “must be made within 7 days after the entitlement of the claimant to make an adjudication application first arises under section 12”. The question that the court had to decide was from when the 7 days begins to run: at [20].

5 It was not in dispute that the dispute settlement period ended on 27 June 2023. On 28 June 2023, MT was entitled to lodge an adjudication application: at [22]. MT’s case was that 28 June 2023 was excluded from the computation of the seven-day period for calculating the deadline for lodging the adjudication application (“MT’s Interpretation”). HP’s case was that the computation started from, and was inclusive of, 28 June 2023 (“HP’s Interpretation”): at [15].

6 Section 50(a) of the Interpretation Act 1965 (2020 Rev Ed) (the “IA”) supported MT’s Interpretation and MT’s Interpretation is also consistent with the common law on the computation of time from a certain date which is to exclude the day of the event from the computation of a period within which a person must act upon that event: at [23]. Moreover, there is a general principle of law that the law does not take into account fractions of a day, and thus, in calculating the deadline for making an adjudication application under s 13(3)(a) of the SOPA, the deadline calculation excludes the entirety of the day when the subject event happens, ie, the date when the entitlement to make the adjudication application under s 12 of the SOPA first arises: at [26].

7 There was no need to rely on extraneous material not forming part of the written law in the interpretation of s 13(3)(a) of the SOPA or s 50(a) of the IA in the present context as HP did not argue that any part of the SOPA or the IA was ambiguous or obscure and neither did it suggest that MT’s Interpretation was manifestly absurd or unreasonable: at [33]. While the purpose of the SOPA is to provide an expeditious adjudicative system to temporarily resolve disputes, it was a stretch to argue that the difference between MT’s Interpretation and HP’s Interpretation meant that HP’s Interpretation met the purpose of the SOPA while MT’s did not just because MT’s Interpretation would mean an extra one day to file an adjudication application: at [34]. HP’s argument that its interpretation was in harmony with other timelines in the SOPA which adopt a time period of seven days or multiples of seven days was also without merit: at [35].

8 The case law and industry practice cited by HP in support of its interpretation was not persuasive. The industry practice was based on documents that did not track the actual words used in s 13(3)(a) of the SOPA and did not have the force of law: at [36]. The case law cited did not address squarely the interpretation of s 13(3)(a) of the SOPA: at [37]–[39].

9 The court therefore took the view that the present adjudication application was made within time on 6 July 2023 as the entitlement to lodge an adjudication application first arose on 28 June 2023, which was the day after the last day of the dispute settlement period, and an adjudication application should be filed within seven days after 28 June 2023, which would be 6 July 2023 (excluding the public holiday on 29 June 2023). The court dismissed the appeal: at [41]–[42].