It is good contract administration practice to ensure the other party actually receives important documents and that there is a record of the method of service, the time of delivery and who received the document.
Under the various Security of Payment adjudication acts, service of documents is critical to both parties in putting their case to the Adjudicator who has to satisfy himself/herself that both parties have received all the pertinent documents in relation to a dispute within the strict timeframes provided by the Act(s).
Evidence of service may be in the form of:
- facsimile receipts;
- Express post; (Australia Post provides an online tracking facility)
- registered post; (Australia Post provides an online tracking facility)
- courier delivery;
- confirmed hand delivery;
- any other method provided under the Contract or legislation.
If you are posting the correspondence then the address sent to must be in accordance with the contract and/or the relevant legislation. If you wish to send the post to the other party’s principal place of business or the registered office and these are not known then you may wish to find this information through an ASIC information brokers. It costs a little bit but the information is maintained by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) under Commonwealth law.
If for any reason you have no record of service it may be pertinent to consider providing a Statutory Declaration that service was made, who was served the document, the service address, how service occurred and the date of service.