On a School Construction Authority job, the paperwork is the money. Not a figure of speech — the contract ties your progress payment to your sign-in logs, your change-order money to a 90-day clock, and your delay claim to a notice you either sent on time or didn't. We walked the $21 billion plan last week (The SCA Has $21 Billion. Here's the Part You Can Actually Bid On.). This is the part of the bid book that plan never mentions.

So the question here is simple: how does the SCA pay you, how does it price extra work, and when is a claim already lost? We read a current SCA Invitation to Bid — an August 2026 Queens interior-and-exterior repair contract under the authority's standard Construction Contract and October 2022 General Conditions — and pulled every clock out of it. Here they are, in the order they'll hit you.

“Cash the check without the schedule and the claim's gone.”

The payment cycle: monthly, less 5 percent. The SCA may pay each business month on an approved estimate of work in place, and it holds back 5 percent of every estimate. Before your first application you file a Detailed Payment Breakdown, and the SCA only approves distributions it finds "reasonable, equitably balanced." Front-loading is its call, not yours.

Every requisition carries paper. Certified payrolls for the period, an OSHA-training certification the first time each worker shows up, and current Daily Signature Logs — the contract says log submissions "must be current before the SCA will process" a progress payment. Let your super fall two weeks behind on the sign-in sheets and your requisition sits. Certified payrolls are also due on their own clock: within 30 days of the first payroll and every 30 days after, now through the SCA's electronic payroll system. And nothing gets paid at all until you're enrolled in the City's Financial Management System through the Payee Information Portal. Do that the day you get the Notice of Intent to Award, not the day you want a check.

Subs get paid on a clock. HVAC, plumbing and electrical subs within 7 calendar days of the SCA's payment; everyone else within 15. Sub retainage is capped at 5 percent, or 10 if the sub wouldn't bond. A stiffed Wicks sub — the separately-bid mechanical, plumbing and electrical trades — can write the SCA, and after five days the SCA withholds from the prime and pays the sub directly. Union benefit funds have the same hammer under the PLA.

Now, one caution on that PLA. This ITB cites the project labor agreement covering Fiscal Years 2021 through 2025, on a contract that will run into FY2029. The SCA's own page says the PLA in effect when a contract starts governs it start to finish. We haven't confirmed whether that agreement was extended, and we're not going to guess. Before you price labor on an SCA bid, confirm with the SCA which PLA applies to it.

Closeout. At substantial completion the SCA pays the balance less four times the value of whatever's still on the punch list. Let's say $25,000 of punch list is open — that's $100,000 held. A lien notice triggers a holdback of one-and-a-half times the lien. And here's the one that costs people: accepting any payment after substantial completion "shall operate as a general release" of every claim against the SCA except the ones you itemize, with dollars and days, on a schedule the Chief Project Officer countersigns. Cash the check without the schedule and the claim's gone. Keep every record six years; the SCA can audit all of it.

Change orders: the markups are written down. No extra work gets paid without a written Notice of Direction signed by an authorized SCA representative. Verbal direction from the field is worth exactly nothing. The SCA picks the pricing method, negotiated or time-and-materials, "in its sole discretion" — but the arithmetic isn't up for debate:

On time-and-materials, daily signed statements of every worker, rate and hour go to the SCA, and you owe notice when you hit 80 percent of the authorized amount.

The 90-day clock. A directive worth $50,000 or more becomes an Allowance Change Order, paid up to 80 percent as you go. You owe a detailed cost proposal within 90 days of the Notice of Direction. Miss it and progress payments on that work stop — not the whole job, but every dollar on that directive. Under $50,000, the SCA can set its own number by Unilateral Change Order: 80 percent as the work proceeds, the last 20 when you sign or at closeout.

Deemed denied. Any change order still open nine months after substantial completion is denied by the contract's own terms. Nobody has to say no; the calendar says it. A signed change order is full payment for that work, delay included, and there's no lost profit on deleted work.

Delay: time, rarely money. The clause is built on New York's no-damages-for-delay rule. Money is on the table only for the SCA's bad faith or gross negligence, delays "not contemplated by the parties," abandonment, or breach of a fundamental obligation. Other contractors, utilities, strikes, shortages, weather, pandemics and concurrent delay earn you time. Just time.

Even a delay that qualifies recovers a short list — extended field labor, site maintenance, sheds and scaffolds, field office and on-site staff, documented escalation, schedule updates and permits. Excluded by name: profit, home-office overhead, vehicles, bonuses, attorneys' fees and claim-preparation costs. And none of it survives a missed notice. Failure to "strictly comply" with the progress-schedule section is "a conclusive waiver" of delay damages. Conclusive. That word has eaten more claims than any bad schedule ever did.

Liquidated damages. The sample contract sets $2,000 per calendar day past substantial completion (695 days from notice to proceed) and another $2,000 a day past final completion (755 days), assessable against you or your surety. Where the PLA doesn't apply and the award tops $3 million, a separate $200 a day runs while apprenticeship compliance lapses. Time gets extended only by change order — so a late-running job with no signed extension is a job paying $2,000 a day.

Notice and disputes. Deadline notices go by hand with a written receipt, or by regular mail plus fax or email to the legal-notices address named in the General Conditions. A text to the project officer doesn't count. The SCA's decisions on extra work, prevailing wage, safety and insurance are appealable only under Article 78. A formal claim starts with a Notice of Claim under Public Authorities Law §1744; within 15 working days of filing it you can elect the SCA's non-binding mediation — mediator approved by both sides, costs split, a confidential advisory opinion if it fails.

What to do next. Give written notice on time and keep daily cost records. On an SCA job that means a Notice of Direction in hand before the extra work starts, a cost proposal inside 90 days, sign-in logs that never trail the requisition, and a closeout schedule listing every open dollar before you cash the next check. None of that is hard. All of it is the difference between getting paid and getting a lesson.

This is a read of one bid book, not legal advice. The project-specific contract controls; have your counsel review it.