An adjudicator under the Building and Construction Industry Payments Act 2004 (Qld) is not required to examine, assess and value each and every variation claim in a voluminous payment claim; a methodology of examining a selection of claims to arrive at a conservative lump sum progress payment is legitimate, provided the adjudicator acts bona fide and affords procedural fairness. Section 27 of the Payments Act only binds a subsequent adjudicator in respect of claims that were actually individually valued by the earlier adjudicator, not claims that were merely referred to in arriving at a global assessment. A party that adopts inconsistent positions in successive adjudications (arguing claims were not valued in one proceeding while arguing they were valued in another) commits an abuse of process that may vitiate the subsequent adjudication.
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