How do I check out a builder in NSW before I work for them?
Search the legal entity name or the licence number from the contract on the Service NSW licence check at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au. Confirm the licence is current and the class covers the work, and read any conditions, cancellations, suspensions or public warnings listed against it. Then run the same name through the NSW Online Registry court lists, ASIC's published notices and AustLII. A lapsed or conditioned licence on a builder running live jobs is worth a direct question before you price.
Step one: the licence check
Start on ABN Lookup and confirm the legal entity on your subcontract, with its ABN. Then search that exact name, or the licence number, on the Service NSW licence check. You want the licence current, the class covering the work, and nothing listed under conditions, cancellations or public warnings. Disciplinary action against a licence is published, and it usually arrives after the complaints, not before.
Steps two to four: courts, ASIC, judgments
The NSW Online Registry court lists let you search a party name across the Supreme, District and Local Court lists. Look for the builder as defendant in debt or building claims, and for winding-up applications in the Supreme Court corporations list. Court lists only show matters with a coming listing, so an empty result is weaker evidence than a hit.
ASIC's published notices show winding-up applications and the appointment of administrators, liquidators or restructuring practitioners, for the builder and any sister companies with the same directors. The Federal Court's Federal Law Search is worth a minute too, because many winding-up applications are filed there rather than in the Supreme Court.
AustLII, searched with the name in quotes, turns up payment disputes that went to a judge, challenges to adjudication decisions and findings about how the builder administers its contracts. A builder that litigates adjudication decisions is telling you what enforcing a win against it will cost.
What New South Wales gives you that other states don't
Under the NSW Act a head contractor must pay a subcontractor within 20 business days of the payment claim, and retention money for subcontractors on larger projects must be held in trust. Both are worth checking against the subcontract before you sign: a payment term longer than the Act allows is void to that extent, and a retention clause that ignores the trust requirement tells you how carefully the builder's paperwork is kept.
Builder Check runs the entity match and the register searches for you, free, and emails the result with the prefilled searches. review.theconstructioncontracts.co/builder-check
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Scan my subcontract freeCommon questions
Does NSW publish adjudication decisions by builder name?
Not in a searchable register the way Queensland does. Adjudication in NSW runs through private authorised nominating authorities, so the public trail is the court lists and AustLII, where challenged or enforced determinations appear as judgments.
The builder's licence is held by a person, not the company. Is that a problem?
Check that the company on your contract is the one that holds, or is covered by, a current contractor licence for the work. A company trading on an individual's licence without the right arrangement is a question for the builder and for Fair Trading, and a reason to keep your own claims clean from the first month.
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General information for Australian subcontractors, not legal advice. Statutory deadlines and details vary by state and change over time; verify them before relying on them. Written by Mat Kennedy at The Construction Contracts Co.