Louise Stewart, an advocate for fair pay for subcontractors and creator of the ProjectPay platform, is urging builders to embrace the new technology to help facilitate the requirement of project bank accounts.

By doing this, subcontractors avoid the issue of delayed and non-payments in the construction industry.

Louise raised her concerns to Master Builders Queensland and explained how her Project Bank Accounts (PBAs) platform is a step forward in addressing the problem.

“It’s vital that PBAs or cascading trusts are used for private projects, because that’s where most of the criminal behaviour and unconscionable conduct occurs,” she says.

“And to overcome the barriers of use – such as high levels of manual administration – the combination of technology and trust legislation that cascades down the supply chain is the answer. The Queensland and WA governments know it and the UK government knows it.

“A collaborative payment platform like ProjectPay will play a crucial role in helping implement PBAs and provide more access to working capital. It has been purpose built to comply with the requirements of PBAs and cascading trusts.”

Once a user sets up an account with ProjectPay there are plenty of benefits including having no administration burden, protected and guaranteed payments, compliance with legislation and the actual subbies get paid on time.

“We are embarking on an education campaign for SME subcontractors about how they can use ProjectPay to comply with new trust requirements across public and private projects. It’s easy to use and means there’ll be no more unethical behaviour of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’,” she says.

At the moment, ProjectPay is working with Findex Australia to provide and upfront and continuing finance offer.  The company is also in talks with financiers interested in providing debt finance that can cope with the scale of finance transactions on the ProjectPay platform.