Name: Prevailing Wage 101: Essential Compliance Insights for Construction Pros
Uploaded: 2026-04-07T19:31:05.564Z
Duration: 56 min
Description: Prevailing Wage 101: Essential Compliance Insights for Construction Pros

Transcript for "Prevailing Wage 101: Essential Compliance Insights for Construction Pros": Hi. Good afternoon or good morning depending on what time zone you're joining us from and welcome to today's webinar. Today's topic, the Railing Wage one zero one, Essential Compliance Insights for Construction Pros. Couple of quick housekeeping notes before we get started. For the best webinar experience, please use Google Chrome. The audio for today's presentation will be streamed through your computer as there's no dial in. So please make sure the volume on your speakers is turned up. You can download the presentation slides and any additional resources in the resource tab. An on demand recording or LinkedIn on demand recording will be emailed to you within twenty four hours after today's webinar ends. So please feel free to watch it back or share with anyone else who may benefit from today's content. If have any questions at all, please type them into the q and a box. We've got a number of questions come in already, a number of pre submitted. We'll get a number during the presentation. We'll get to as many as we can at the end of the presentation. Any we don't get to or any that require a more one on one conversation, we'll follow-up individually offline. As I mentioned, today's topic is prevailing wage one zero one, essential compliance insights for construction pros. This is part of our construction accounting university two point o series. So please feel free to not only watch this back, but feel free to to take in any of the other sessions that are part of the series that may benefit you in the construction world. Quick introduction. I'm your host for today's webinar. I'm John Mibers, the vice president general manager at Delta Computers. Got a little over thirty five years of experience working in the construction industry. Started my career in construction working in the industry, working for a large mechanical contractor of various roles in my over ten years there. I spent the last twenty five plus years serving the over 6,000 contractors nationwide as a leader of the Deltek ComputerEase team. A lot of my role here today is focused on equipping contractors with the tools they need to manage profitability, drive growth, and meet the ever changing complex construction requirements, including prevailing wage. So what are we gonna learn today? We're talk a little bit about prevailing wage, what it is, what the what either the the Davis Bacon Act or the the state prevailing wage, what that all entails, how to accurately determine and manage the prevailing wage rates, some of the common challenges that we face and strategies to mitigate some of the risks we encounter in in managing what can be, you know, a challenging task for the contractor. Would talk to a lot of contractors and sometimes they shy away from doing prevailing wage work because they don't wanna handle all the administrative effort it takes to make sure that you're in compliance and can document that. But with the right tool, the right system, like Computerease, and we'll we'll see some examples of things in Computerease later on. But, you know, regardless of whether you're using Computerease or some other solution, you know, the what you need to do to manage your prevailing wage to be compliant to produce the reports is important that you understand what's involved in that. Obviously, you have the right tool. We can make it much easier to perform the administrative piece of that. So I'm gonna launch a quick polling question here. I'd like to get an idea who we have on the in our audience today. So I'd like to know what is your current accounting or construction ERP system? Maybe you're currently using Deltek Computaries, Foundation, Jonas, QuickBooks, Sage, Viewpoint or other. Go ahead and open that up. We'll leave that open for maybe thirty seconds or so, then share the results. And then we'll I'm gonna launch another quick polling question right after that as well, But we'll leave this open for another fifteen, twenty seconds. Give it about another ten seconds here. And let's go ahead and share the results here. So it looks like about half of you using computers today. Got a small percentage on foundation. Jonas, a good percentage on QuickBooks, Sage, Viewpoint, others. A good good variation there of the of the solutions that we're using. So thank you for taking a minute there to fill out that that polling question. I'm also gonna follow that up with one more quick polling question because a lot of times the obviously, the prevailing wage topic comes up when you're doing state and local work, public work. A lot of times in you know, a lot of people on the call today are probably more doing state, local, and education or what we call sled work. So curious, you know, I'll launch the polling question here. Do you have sled contracts but only in one state? Do you have sled contracts in more than one state? You maybe you're not doing any state and local work today, any sled work today, but you hope to or you don't plan on doing that. I'll go ahead and open up that polling question and we'll leave that open for about thirty seconds as well. Give everybody a chance to answer that. Give another fifteen seconds or so. And I'm gonna go ahead and close that poll and share the results. So it looks like a good number of you were doing sled work, in one state, another good selection doing sled work in more than one state. And then, you know, almost 15% of you were looking to do sled work or maybe you're not doing it today. So I think that's so regardless of which category, which answer you gave there, I think, you know, today's content is certainly going to be is going to be relevant to you. So let's talk a little bit about prevailing wage. What is it? How what is it all about? What are the keys to managing that? So prevailing wage is often, you know, if you if you simplify it, it's the hourly wage and the hourly wage benefits and overtime compensation that must be paid to workers on public construction projects. So if you're doing publicly funded work, there's going to be requirements in in most cases that you have to pay the prevailing wage. And that's part of the part of the contract, part of the information that you're provided when you're bidding the job. We'll talk about how important it is to make sure you understand that. And the prevailing wage laws primarily aim to prevent unfair competition among contractors based on the labor costs. So we have a publicly funded project and we don't want someone to be to have an unfair advantage in getting that work because they can undercut or underpay their labor workforce. There certainly is difference between state and federal prevailing wage. And those certainly can change. So there are certainly different, quote, unquote, flavors of prevailing wage. The rates are not always the same even, you know, state prevailing wage even within the same state depending on the jurisdiction may not be the same. So these are all things that you need to take into consideration when you're doing this work because at the end of the day, it is you, the employer's responsibility to understand what the rules are, understand what the prevailing wage rates are that that must be paid. And then you're going to certify, which is why there come that's where the certified pay report comes in. You're certifying that you have paid those wages, which should match the prevailing wage rate determination. The Davis Bacon Act, a lot of times you'll hear people talk about doing Davis Bacon work. Because the Davis Bacon Act is it was the federal law that was passed in 1931 in The US. It required contractors and subcontractors working on federally funded construction projects to pay their laborers and mechanics. The prevailing wage rates infringe benefits is a term by the US Department of Labor. Like, it was last updated in 2023. And a lot of times, we'll, you know, we'll I'll hear contractors will just refer to, you know, do you do Davis Bacon work? Well, you know, that you could be doing state prevailing wage work that that really doesn't have anything specifically to do with the Davis Bacon Act. But it you know, sometimes because Davis Bacon is where this all started, everything sometimes, you know, people will use that term to just identify all prevailing wage work. But the Davis Bacon Act is certainly something that most people will be familiar with and it's kinda what where where how this got its start. And then there's certainly been different variations of that and certainly each state has their own variation of that. What are some of the benefits of prevailing wage? One, it certainly promotes fair compensation and benefits, prevents wage undercutting. So, if I'm working for a contractor, someone else isn't going to come in and undercut us on the labor rates. Certainly, can help attract skilled workforce. I want to if I'm working for a contractor that's paying competitive rates and a lot of times, if I'm doing a lot of prevailing wage work, then I'm going to be paid that prevailing rate. That can certainly help me in attracting qualified workers who want to do work that is subject to the prevailing wage in a lot of cases. I mean, there there certainly is a benefit. Now, a lot of times, you know, the non prevailing wage rates have certainly changed over the years and a lot of times, sometimes in in fact, they're higher than the prevailing wage rates. But, you know, that and I think there's certainly a lot of cases where the prevailing wage is not significantly higher than the non prevailing wage rate. That wasn't always the case. So there's a lot of there's certainly a lot of benefits to doing prevailing wage work for both the workers and certainly the contractors and employers. I mean, it's certainly, we can be assured that we're not going to be undercut on labor for bidding public work. Prevailing wage is going to level the playing field for the labor. And so we're going to make sure that we're not going to be undercut on the hourly labor rate based on that. So I think certainly doing prevailing wage work is a big benefit contractor, for the employer, and that it levels the playing field as far as the rates we have to pay. There are certainly a lot of things that factor in this. We'll get into this here in just a minute. We'll get into how that works, how some of the what are some of the rules. We'll talk about the base rate versus the fringe rate. There are certainly some differences there. So these are all things that we'll talk about throughout the course of today's webinar. Some of the arguments against prevailing wage, sometimes people will say that it's gonna increase the project cost, it's gonna reduce competition. It puts maybe an unfair administrative burden on the contractor to comply with the work. And that's certainly something that people who would argue against prevailing wage work would argue these points. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think it creates a better competition, in fact, and maybe the reduced competition can come at a cost. Cheaper is not always better if I can come in, undercut the labor costs, that's not always the right thing to do. So, where do the prevailing wage rates come from? So, these are going to be determined. You're going to get the prevailing wage determination sheet. You're gonna be able to you're gonna understand what the prevailing wage rates are. You're gonna understand the difference between the base rate and the fringe rate. You're understand the options for the fringe portion. You can pay the fringe as a fringe benefit. You can you can take credit for multiple fringe benefits as part of the fringe package. You can pay the fringe or the excess fringe as part of the wage. But we'll talk about some of the different, you know, things that has an impact on as we go throughout the presentation here. So, you know and there are also one thing to note, there are substantial penalties for not paying the correct rate and or not paying the correct rate because you didn't have the correct worker class ratio. We'll get into that here in a minute. But as an example, a lot of times the prevailing wage rules will say, you can have one apprentice for every journeyman. Okay? Because once again, we're we're trying to to prevent, you know, somebody that's, you know, is gonna put two apprentices out there or five apprentices out there and no journeyman. Now they're they obviously have a lower labor cost per hour than the than the company that's putting, you know, two journeymen and two apprentices. So there are specific ratios that you have to comply with. And once again, there are substantial issues if you don't. Anybody's ever been through prevailing wage audit will know what I'm talking about. I've been through a number of them in my in my career. And, you know, having to deal with that, one of the first things they're gonna look for is the outer ratio because that's a that's a big can be a big ticket item if, you know, you had a job and and you had every day, you had two apprentices and one journeyman, the ratio was one to one. Well, you could have two journeymen and one apprentice, but what you can't do is have two apprentices and one well, you can, but you can't pay two or two people apprentice rate and one people journeyman rate. And that's something that we'll we'll you wanna look out for. And we'll we'll take a look at some things you can do to help prevent that. But that that will be one of the things that will almost certainly get caught in a prevailing wage audit. All right, we're gonna take a look at some of these examples in computers here in just a minute. So we'll come back to that and we'll kind of go over to the software here in a few minutes to take a look at some examples. But what are some of the things that we can do to mitigate the risk and make sure that we are compliant? One, we need to maintain accurate records. There are a lot of times we don't properly document what we do. We don't have good records. We're not prepared for an audit. And the best way to prepare for an audit is conducting an internal audit. Make sure audit yourself so that when if and when you're required to go through prevailing wage audit, you've already you've already done a self audit and you already know that you have paid the right rates. You've paid the correct base rate, fringe rate, you're in you have the right ratios, everyone was paid properly. And those are things that you wanna do. And you can very easily monitor that on your own so that once you know, when if and when someone were to come in and look at that, you're you're prepared. You have all the documentation. And the quickest way to to to comply is make sure that you you know, when you're well documented and you can provide all that documentation, they'll be in and out of there in a minute because, you know, we can go to the next audit and know that we're gonna find somebody that's not well documented. And that's where, you know, that's where I can find, you know, things if if I'm an auditor. So, you know, if if you're ready and prepared and have the right documentation, this should not, you know, should not be a problem. And once again, though, it's gonna be very challenging because if you think about all the talk about the ratios. What if I had a a journeyman and an apprentice? I was in ratio one to one for today, but the journeyman had to leave an hour early and they left their the apprentice there behind to finish out the day. Well, guess what? That last hour of the day, I've had a ratio. I need to pay the apprentice journeyman rate, not apprentice rate because there was only one person on the job site, and I can't have an apprentice if I don't have a journeyman. So doesn't mean that an apprentice can't be there on their own. Just means they can't be there and be paid the apprentice rate without a journeyman there. So those are things we can easily catch. You make sure we're paying the right rate. If you're a nonunion contractor, you have people going from non prevailing wage jobs to prevailing wage jobs, and maybe there's a there obviously is a difference and sometimes could be significant in the rate of pay. You know? And whether it's, you know, a dollar an hour or $10 an hour, it doesn't matter. If it's different, I need to know that on this non prevailing wage job, I'm going to pay you x. And on prevailing wage job, I need to pay you y. Well, I need to know when I change from job to job that that I can comply with that. On the same job, I may be performing a different type of work. Maybe I'm an equipment operator. Well, a lot of times in the prevailing wage determination sheet, depending on the type of equipment that you're running is going to determine the rate that I have to pay. So one piece of equipment may require one rate and another piece of equipment may require another rate. So you you need to make sure that you can manage that. And you and you know that, okay, when I'm working on a piece of equipment, I get one rate. I'm working on another piece or maybe I'm on a piece of equipment, I get one rate, then I'm on I'm down on the ground as a labor. I'm gonna be paid a different rate on the same job. These are all things that we can manage automatically with the the right tools. So where does, you know, where does technology come in with all this? What are what are the right tools that I need to be able to help manage all of this? You know, so we can help streamline the determination of the rates. We can we can make sure we're paying the proper rates. We can allocate the fringes properly. We can make sure we're producing certified payer reports. We can reduce all the manual errors that come with trying to do this manually and making sure we have all up to date information and are able to document everything that we're doing. Alright. So I'm gonna go over. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here and we're gonna come over. We're gonna take a look at some of these things in ComputeEase. Like I said, for the for the for the purpose of today's presentation, I'm going to use ComputeEase to give you some examples. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here. And we'll take a look at some of these things in in Computaries to see how system like Computaries can help us manage all these complex requirements. So, I'm gonna start and it is always driven from the job. So if I were to take a look at a at a particular job as an example, and I'll just gonna go in and we'll we'll we'll pull up a we'll pull up a job that's a happens to be a prevailing wage job and then we'll take a look at some of the things that we're talking about here. But I'm gonna go in to a particular job and we'll look at some of the reporting here in a bit. But when I go in to the job itself, need to identify. I want to identify not only is this a prevailing wage job, does that do I need to produce certified payroll reports? But if it's prevailing wage job, which rate table was it going to use? Are there certain settings that need to be on the certified payroll report? We'll look at an example that here in a minute. I may have, as I mentioned earlier, depending on the jurisdiction, I may have different pay rates. So I wanna go in and this particular job is is in in this county or this particular area area state jurisdiction. And here's going to be all the worker classifications. And here's going to be the appropriate rates of pay. In this example, a journeyman gets $39 an hour plus $8 in fringes. A laborer class one gets $20 an hour plus $6 in fringes. An operator gets $22 an hour I'm sorry, $30 an hour plus $8 in fringes. A class two operator gets $32 an hour plus $8 in fringes. And this is all laid out in the in the prevailing wage determination sheet so you know who's you know, what the rates are for a given job. Make sure you you don't wait until after you get a job to find out that these are the rates you're required to pay. Certainly, you don't wanna bid a job without knowing what you're going to have to pay, and it's it's all should be spelled out for you, you know, in the bidding process and make sure you understand this going in. But, you know, here's how we're going to just to to set that up, make sure we have all the rates set up. You know, I know we talked about fringes. We'll talk a little bit more about this here in a minute. And I mentioned, you know, the the the fringe. In this example here, we'll we'll go back to the journeyman example. So I get $39 an hour plus $8 in fringes. And notice here, in this example, I'm saying, but the employee fringes can reduce the $8 fringe. In other words, I provide different amount of fringe benefits to each of my employees. Maybe I pay part of their health insurance and vacation holiday pay, etcetera. You could and so for the bonafide fringes that I can take credit for, I can take that against the $8 fringe package that's spelled out in in the in the prevailing wage rates. What I do with the remainder of the $8 is up to me as employer. I could put the remainder of the 8 into another fringe into prevailing wage pension plan, four zero one k pension plan, or I could pay it as a cash wage. Now sometimes people will take the what they think is the easiest option, which ends up being by far the most expensive option. They'll say, well, I don't wanna manage all of that, so I'm just gonna pay it all as part of the base wage. I could just pay the employee $47 an hour and be done with it. Not take any credit for fringes I provide, not put any of the $8 into a an into another fringe. But what happens if I if I pay $47 in wages? I have to pay employer taxes on that $47. Like, if you just shoot a workers' comp, workers' comp being by far the most expensive of that. So if an employer, I'm taking the $8 and paying it as a wage, it's costing me more than $8 an hour. As another employer, my competitor is taking that $8 and putting it into either a, taking credit for the fringes they already provide, plus putting the difference into a pension or four zero one k plan. They're not paying things such as workers' comp on top of that. So their hourly rate is gonna be lower than mine. Their cost per hour is going to be lower. So, you know, don't too many times people don't wanna don't wanna do what's required to take credit for the fringes and they think it'll be easy. And, yes, it it and I guess you could say it'll be easier. We'll keep you compliant. Sure. It will keep you compliant. If I pay $47 an hour, no one's gonna have any problem with that, but it's not the most efficient way to do it. And if you have the right tool in place, all this becomes automatic. In this example here, it's gonna automatically know what each employee employee fringes reduce the the fringe. I set up the fringe to be a four zero one k or a pension fringe where I'm gonna contribute the difference between what I provide and the $8 into another fringe and I'm gonna pay them the $39 an hour as their base rate. So these are all options that we have, but we can set this all up one time at the job level and then we enter time to the job, which we'll see here in a minute, that's all gonna drive that. You know, there's there's other settings you can, you know, that you can you you can that drive, you know, what's gonna what's gonna appear on the report itself. What is the language? As you can see here, there's a lot of a lot of document, you know, a lot of check boxes here. You know, one jurisdiction may require you to include something, another may require you to to not include as much detail or more detail. But that all can be set up. You notice here, you know, that we have an option to certify. Is it job time only? Because there could be time spent in the shop that I wanna code to the job, but it's not on the job site. So it's not covered by the prevailing wage rate. So I don't need to pay prevailing wage on the shop time or the travel time. Once again, these settings can automate all of that for us. Because keep in mind, just because I wanna put time to the job doesn't necessarily mean it's covered by the prevailing wage rule. So those are things that we wanna make sure that we're looking at. And that's all all set up at the job level and we'll see some then we'll see some examples of how that can drive everything we're doing. You know, we talked about that fringe package and, you know, and then when you go if you wanna take credit for each individual employee, you know, it's in the employee file, I'm going to identify, well, the fringe benefits that we provide for an individual employee. I'm gonna identify what those are and what their value is. And that's gonna take that credit against that $9 an hour or $8 an hour fringe package, it will know that and keep in mind, Bill's may be different than Bob's, may be different than Mary's. So all those those rates can be different. But that's all that's gonna be tracked at the individual employee level and that's gonna take the appropriate credit for that. So those are, you know, just a couple of things with the setup. You know, when we set up, there's also things, you know, you know, you're gonna you can we'll see an example of a printed certified payroll report. A lot of you may need to submit the certified payroll information electronically, LCPtracker, EMARS or some, you know, some services out there that that a lot of jurisdictions will require you or contractors you may work for, owners that you work for, will require you to submit that data, you know, through through them. So with with Computerease, we can either print out the certified payrolls and or generate the electronic format. It can be up made uploaded to LCPtracker, EMARS or one of those solutions as well. So those are things certainly that you wanna be aware of and understand how that all flows. But keep in mind that all started when I set up the job. I set up the job, I set up the prevailing wage rules. You know, I I had that I I I knew what the rates were before I bid the job, so I use the, you know, the the proper rates. I mean, imagine if you went into a job, didn't realize it it was covered by prevailing wage and you bid it at your non prevailing wage rate only to find out that it's a prevailing wage job. Guess what? It's gonna be really hard for you to to beat the budget on that job when your when your per hour budget rate was lower than what's actually gonna cost you. So make sure we understand all this. You know, wage notifications, you're gonna be required to, you know, send out wage notifications for employees that are gonna work on that job. They're entitled to understand, what what rates they're entitled to depending on the work they do. So, you know, you're going to you know, you're gonna have the, you know, individual. I'm gonna say I need to print a wage notification sheet for those individuals for those jobs, and it's gonna go ahead and generate the report that we can then do, and it'll generate the wage notification report. So I'm gonna go ahead and print the wage notifications. It's gonna generate that so I can then be, know, compliant because I'm gonna provide those reports to the employees, telling them on this job and you perform this type of work, here's the rates that we are we are going to pay. So that's something that we're able to And then you are able to generate those reports and print those for each individual job. And I'll just do one job here and just bring it up. This will tell us who we print reports for. You know, and because I need to get that report signed off by the employee so that I can I as part of my record keeping, I need to know that they signed off on that report? So, you know, that you one, we can generate the report. Two, we can go ahead and then keep track of the reports. Here's an example of the report that we generated. Then that other report was was showing me which employees have signed off on this and sent us back. So we have this. We're able to track all this. But that's, you know, an example of something that that we as an employer required to do. We're required to provide the employee with the documentation, telling them that on this job when they perform this type of work, here's what here's what they're going to be paid. So these are these are things that once again, as an employer, you are required to do. That's part of our part of our responsibility as an employer is to is to be able to provide those reports and then certainly provide the documentation supporting documentation that we paid the correct rates, the certified payer reports, which we'll talk about here in a minute. When we talk about certified and we'll look at some of the details you know, in a minute as we produce a certified report. Keep in mind, a lot of cases, you're required to produce a certified report for each week on the job from beginning to end whether you have somebody on the job site or not. So, you know, if I'm gonna be on this job for fifty two weeks in total, I may not have somebody on the job each of those fifty two weeks, but I will have a certified pay report one through 52 for that job, you know, even if it's a if it's a, you know, zero labor week. I I in a lot of cases, am required to to produce that certified payroll report. So let's talk about the, you know, some of the things we look at. Let's look at the the at the time and how you know, and we we have, you know, certainly, because today is all about prevailing wage. You know, we certainly have many options for entering time in the field. I won't I won't I'm just gonna enter time directly in the computer ease. But certainly, no, we, you know, we we could be entering time from our from our phone, from our iPad or our tablet out in the field, going through the approval process. But what I really wanna wanna highlight here is the fact that that setup we did at the job is going to drive the proper pay rate. So when I go and enter time and and like I said, whether it's just done out in the field or by the, you know, the payroll person in the office. When I when an employee I enter bills, an example. Bill's normal rate of pay is $20 an hour. That's that's what, you know, non prevailing wage rate bill gets $20 an hour. But when I put bill on that job three seventy one, which we identified as prevailing wage job, guess what? Now it's $39 an hour. And we'll see where the $9 in fringes comes in a minute. So the system knows that, okay, Bill was $9 $39 an hour. Bill was out there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of last week. And then also, we'll put time in. So Bill's a journeyman. I'm gonna put time in for Brad who's our apprentice. And Brad's on the same job. But as an apprentice, gets $8 an hour. And, you know, if a Brad was also out there on Thursday, and I'm I'm looking at this, I would know I'm out of ratio. But let's say we've got a lot of time coming in. I don't see that yet. I I so we'll we'll we'll look at this and see what we will do because I'm I'm intentionally creating an out of ratio situation where Brad is an apprentice, worked on that job on Thursday without a journeyman being there. So that's one example. And then I'm gonna go ahead and we'll do another example here. I'm gonna go ahead and put in time for Paul, who's my equipment operator. And once again, brings in the operator rate and maybe Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But then, you know, on on Thursday, I'm gonna go ahead and and Paul was operating a different piece of equipment and which which forced me to classify him as a class two operator because maybe he's on a bigger piece of equipment on Thursday. And remember that class two operator gets paid $32 an hour, not not 30 not $30 an hour. So, you know, I I went ahead and made made that entry there. And now I've got Paul, same job, equipment operator, but different type of equipment on on Thursday. And then maybe on Friday, you know, I'm gonna come and then I'm gonna go ahead and we got Paul on Friday. And on Friday, you know, Paul got off the piece of equipment and I'm gonna pay Paul labor rate on Friday. So on Friday, Paul got off the piece of equipment, and now I'm only required to pay him a labor rate because he's down on the ground. So in that example, Paul's on the same job, but in the same week, I paid three different rates. That's not unrealistic for that to happen. You know, and then so we so we've got time in. We, you know, we could see kind of how the how the how the rates go, how the the job is driving everything, you know. So I I put time in if I wanted to go, you know, at each day throughout the week, the time is coming in from the field. The system is automatically calculating the rates, making sure we're paying everybody the proper rates. And then, you know, when it's all said and done at the end of the week, I'm gonna go ahead and run my proof report and I'm gonna see okay. Let me see a list of all the time it's been entered so far. And, you know, imagine now I've got many employees. It's gonna be really hard for me to dig in and find any outer ratio scenarios. Now remember, I intentionally created one just so we could find it. But, you know, now I wanna very easily be able to find that. So let me go ahead and and look for the worker class ratio report. And I'm gonna run that for this time period and I'm gonna say, okay, on the thirtieth, I had an apprentice, a journeyman operator. That's all good. Oh, wait a minute. On April 2, I had an apprentice and no journeyman. So very clear to me on that day, that's that's not allowed. I had an apprentice, but no journeyman on that day. I have Brad, was the apprentice out there that day. So what does that mean? To be compliant, I need to make sure that on that day, I I pay Brad journeyman scale because he was the only person on-site and the ratio requires one journeyman before I can have an apprentice. So I can't pay someone apprentice rate unless I pay someone the journeyman rate. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna go back on that particular job. I'm gonna bring back up the time in that case there. And I'm gonna be able to edit that and say, okay. I need to go make that change. And we'll go into Brad's time on the second and say, you know what? On the second, I need to reclassify him as a journeyman. And that will put me back in compliance. So I, you know, I so I can I can look for those things, make any of those changes, come back and run that worker class ratio report? And now, guess what? I got okay. So it's okay to have a journeyman without an apprentice. It just wasn't okay to have an apprentice without a journeyman. So here, I quickly get verified that, yep, for every apprentice, had a journeyman where I didn't. I went back and corrected it, and now everything is good. So I've got the time entered. I've checked for compliance. I've had the system automatically drive the the the pay rates, the worker class, the the job driving the pay rates. At the end, I'm gonna run my final proof report. I'm gonna go ahead and run the the the payroll register, which is gonna do all my gross to net calculations. So I'm gonna go ahead and run the payroll register. And once the payroll register is done, I can now produce the certified payroll register. So, for this was for was for last week. So week ending April 5, I'm gonna go ahead and produce the certified report for the job or jobs that were required. And there's the certified payroll report. I got Paul on there. I got Bill on there. I got Brad on there. I've got Brad on there as an apprentice and a journeyman. I got Paul as a laborer, an operator class one, and an operator class two because those are all the different rates that I paid him throughout the week. And it's gonna it's gonna appropriately track the, you know, the the the rates. It's gonna track the gonna track the wages, gonna track the fringes. It's gonna know what fringes we took credit for. So we have all of that documented. We're producing the report. We have all the language and this can all be modified. Certain jurisdictions may require certain certifications here. But the end of the day, you are certifying, testifying that you have paid the rates listed above and that you're and that's the purpose of the certified payroll register. We can go ahead and produce that now when we produce payroll. We can produce that after we produce the payroll. A lot of times, we go back and find out we're missing that. So let's go ahead and kinda follow this process through. So we prepared payroll for processing. We've now processed it whether you're doing it in house, you're using our outside payroll service. We we finished the we finished the the process. I'm gonna go ahead and finish payroll, post the payroll, and now, you know, everything is done, complete. We're on to the next week. We've done our, you know, direct deposits, everything. We've sent out our email pay stubs. But now we go back and I need to go back and print the certified report for a prior time. I could be three weeks from now, four weeks from now, six months from now, two years from now, but I need to go back and run the certified for job three seventy one for the week ending four or five. That data is always there for me to recreate. So I can go back and run this at any point in time. I can pick any date, any job, and go back and generate regenerate that certified payroll report at any time. And that's once again, that a lot of times you're gonna be required to do that. And, you know, if you don't do that, that that can certainly be be a problem. If you can't easily reproduce that, you didn't make a copy of it, you don't have copies, that can be that can be a problem. Alright. So, you know, we talked about a number of things. And I know we're covering a lot of information to very high levels. So like, you know, once again, you'll get a link to the recording from today. Please feel free to watch this back. But things if I just kind of to recap some of the things we looked at here. We are gonna go ahead. We had to print that wage notification report to send out to our employees telling them this is a prevailing wage job and here's the rates you can be expected to be paid. These are the rates we're required to pay you. I have to tell you that's a prevailing wage job, and I have to notify you that when you work on that job, here's what you're here's what you will be paid. So it's important that you produce that. It's important that when you set up the job, you know, you you set up all the proper information. You identify it as a prevailing wage job. You set up the rate table that you wish to use. So when I, you know, when I set up that job, I'm gonna come over here and I told it what the you know, what's prevailing wage rate table to use for this particular job. So it's important that we set that up and we have that we have that calculated. It's important that we have those worker classes set up. All the different worker classes that are part of that prevailing wage. You have all the report formatted properly. So it's including all the information that you're required to provide. You have all the worker classes that perform work under that list here. So I'm able to set up and I have a list of all the worker classes that I have somebody that fits into that prevailing wage worker class. So these are all important things that we need to set up. We need to make sure we then don't forget to do the things we looked at, run your compliance reports, run your ratio reports. So at the end of the day, it's your responsibility to pay the right wage, wage and benefit package to the employee based on the job they're on, the type of work that they're performing. Know, there's if I'm a laborer normally, but I get up on the bobcat or get up on a backhoe, doesn't matter that I normally am a laborer. But if I'm on that piece of equipment, you now have to pay me operator rate for that for the time I spend on the equipment. Doesn't matter if I'm, you know, if my title was equipment operator or not. I got on the piece of equipment. I'm entitled to that rate on that job. So these are things that you gotta that you gotta be on a lookout for, and it's and it's real easy not to catch that until after the fact until you get audited. And, you know so perform that self audit. You know, do it yourself. You know, run an audit. You know, have somebody look at that and confirm and, you know, that that one, you were in ratio. Two, you know, that, wow, somebody ran a piece of equipment, looks like we paid them labor scale. Those are all things that you can look for and much easier if you catch that and get in you know, put in place within your company a best practice to make sure that we're following these rules. Prevailing wage doesn't have to be scary. The compliance work doesn't have to be overly burdensome or scary, but but you have to have the right tools and the right process in place internally to manage that. And it's well, as I mentioned earlier, it's why sometimes people just say, you know what? I don't wanna deal with all that. I'll just pay the full thing. I'll just pay the $39 and the $8 always as hourly rate, and I know that'll cover me. And it will. It'll cost you, but it will cover you. I I don't think you need to do that. I mean, you can do the you know, do it the right way. It and and set it up, set up a process, have the right tool in place that can help you manage that, and it really will be it'd be very simple. I mean, what you know, it only took me one prevailing wage audit to go through and find out what we were doing wrong to figure out a way to do it right and use the tool that I had. And I think the first prevailing wage audit I ever went through, we weren't using Computerease back at that time. Shortly thereafter, we went looking for a new system, found Computerease, and the next prevailing wage audit was much easier because I had all my ducks in a row and everything documented. The system can really be your best friend when it comes to helping you navigate the challenging prevailing wage process. All right, I'm gonna open up some questions here in just a minute. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing my screen here and go back to the slide deck. So give me just a minute. Alright. So we, you know, we talked about you know, we just looked at a good example of the technology. You know, we we talked about the you know, a lot of this and what we looked at in the demo. While I start to get into some questions, I'm gonna launch one last polling question. If you'd like to be contacted to learn more about Deltek Computaries, how we can help with your prevailing wage needs, maybe you're already a customer of ours and you have some additional questions, we can help with, you know, with the setup or the training of how to use some of these features. Please check the yes box. Whether you check yes here or you submit a question that we don't get to, we will certainly follow-up with anybody that has any questions about computers. So I'll leave that polling question open for just a minute. And if you'd like to learn more, just check yes. If not, you can check no or just the or or not respond. And then while we're doing that, I'm gonna go ahead and start to take some questions here. And I know we got a lot of questions that have come in, so we will so I got the first question here. Does posting the wage rates on the job accomplish the same thing? It does if you get but a lot of times you're required to get the employee to sign off that they solve that. Well, just posting it there doesn't necessarily mean that that that they had access to that. So I certainly you know, I I I have seen situations where you could post on the job site, but I think, you know, the first time somebody shows up on the job, the site superintendent has to get them to sign, you know, the sign that document essentially that we produce saying that they've they've acknowledged that. So posting it is great, but I gotta get them to acknowledge that they've seen it. So the best way to do is would I would actually do both. We would post it on the job site and we would provide the, you know, the the wage notification sheet. Alright. What do you do payrolls and find out about the prevailing wages till after payroll is posted? So that's a great question. And it it certainly you know, you can go back and correct that. I mean, you can go back and and on the next paycheck, you know, if I didn't pay somebody, I'm guessing based on that question, you didn't know it's prevailing wage, so you didn't pay the prevailing wage rate. And now we wanna go back and correct that. You can certainly do it on the next payroll. Okay? I I paid you $8 $8. Eight hours at $20 an hour when it should've been $39 an hour. I can go back and make that change on the next payroll. You got a couple of people asking for copies of this session. So, yeah, the the slides will be available and then also you'll get a recording so you'll be able to to do that as well. I'm gonna go ahead and close that polling question and Pop open just some general contact information here while I continue to go through some questions here. So, some additional contact info on the screen. Just a quick reminder before I get back into the questions here. Our next session is part of our Construction Accounting University two point o series is mastering construction revenue recognition, which helps boost compliance and cash flow. That will be on May 5 at 2PM eastern. And once again, you can visit all of these sessions and the the on demand recordings at delltech.com/cau. Somebody wants to know we'll get the playback to to watch again later. Yes. You will receive a email with a link to the recording. You can certainly watch us back later. If working with union employees, is there a way to change an apprentice class on a prevailing wage without a change in their fringes and induction? Sure. Can set up the worker classes in such a way within the the union profile that that you can identify the fringes and deductions. So, yeah, there certainly is a way to do that. A little more involved than what we can explain here, but we can certainly have somebody follow-up and explain that to you. Can you provide some additional information on getting the signature for the employees on the wage rate? So, yeah, you have to be able to document that the that the employees acknowledged receipt of those pay rates. So I can't just give it to you and then say, well, just take my word for it. I gave it to John. I need to have John acknowledge that John received the prevailing wage rate. So typically, the best way to do that is is have that that example I showed was a signed signed document. If you have a labor cost code for excavation, but have a labor and operator coding time to that code, how would you track the labor hours for each classification? So, yeah, certainly within within that worker class code, you you you can certainly have labor and equipment operator charging time to the code. If you want the system to automatically change the worker class based on the code, then you would need, you know, a separate code for the excavation equipment labor versus the the the the labor labor. But either way, you can certainly post equipment labor and labor labor to the same code. If you want the code to automatically drive the worker class, then you'd wanna have it as two separate codes. Charge is looking through some of these questions. A lot of them are duplicates. Yeah. What is the role of the general contractor on a prevailing wage job? Do we need to make sure our subcontractors have the correct ratios or rates you do? I mean, they're well, you need to make sure they're getting the reports. I I can't you you don't have any way of of validating the that the ratios were correct, but it is your responsibility to make sure they submit the reports on time, you know, for every job they work on. And whether you're a general contractor or a sub that has subcontractors, anybody anybody you know, the tier below you needs to submit those certified payroll reports to you. And in turn, you're gonna submit those in a lot of cases to the next level up. In the HVAC world, it doesn't show apprentice wage separate from a journeyman. I don't know when you say it doesn't show that. I'm not sure where it doesn't show that, but I've coming from a mechanical contractor background, certainly, it was always very clearly spelled out on the HVAC side, what the journeyman rate versus an apprentice rate was. But we can certainly follow-up with you because I would need somebody to I need to better understand where you're not seeing that to better answer that question. Defringes only include health insurance. Does the dental, vision, and life count are paid by employer? Yes. Certainly, in most cases, yes. You always wanna verify that they are bonafide fringes that you can take credit for. One thing I will note here, especially when it comes to, you know, sick vacation holiday pay, those are bonafide fringes. But typically, almost always, if the money is put into a separate fund for the benefit of the employee. In other words, I can't just accrue it internally. And if they leave, they lose it all that. And if if I'm I'm taking credit for a dollar an hour for their vacation holiday pay, that has to go into a separate fund typically managed by a third party. So so you wanna take a look at. Just make sure that, you know, some some of those will require you to put the money in a third party's hands so it is clearly earmarked specifically for the benefit of that employee for you to be able to take credit. Does I mean, you can doesn't mean you you can't do it. It just means you you may not be able to take credit for it if you're not if you're not doing that. We aren't a union company, but we still need to stay in ratio. Yes. The the well, in ratio if there's a ratio required. There there there are some cases where, like, I think in this example here, you're talking about a tile setter and a tile finisher. Well, you know, it it may not be that you have to have one setter one finisher for every setter on the job at the same time. That but that that that's the things you wanna look at in the prevailing wage documentation on on what are the ratios and when do they apply. So, you know, my example was, you know, the journey into apprentice. I mean, it's they're one to one. In other words, I can't put two apprentices in in no journeyman where in this in your example that the that you're giving me a tile setter and a tile finisher, those are two different different skill sets. Where the journeyman apprentice ratio, those are essentially the same. They're just different levels of experience, but they're doing the same type of work. So, yeah, there that's not all worker classifications wouldn't have a ratio compliance. It's typically when when there's an apprenticeship program and apprentice involved, that's where the ratios typically come into play. I do have to process a certified pay report for each week. My understanding is you also need to actually pay those prevailing wage employees weekly as well. That is in almost, if not every instance, that is correct. Yes. You know, I and, you know, most people in construction, I think, are paying weekly anyway. But, yeah, if you're doing prevailing wage work, you you need to be paying those. I've I've seen some will do biweekly, but then they work on prevailing wage. They'll pay those people weekly. I think that's way more complicated than it needs to be. I think the best practice in construction is to pay weekly anyway, and then you're covered when it comes to prevailing wage work. Sorry. I'm just looking through a still a large number of questions here. I'm just trying to cover the ones that we maybe haven't got to yet. Can I pay them an employee more than the prevailing wage rate? Sure. You certainly can. If their if their normal rate of pay is more than the prevailing wage rate, you'll want to also keep in mind, you know, when when you say the rate, there's the base rate and the fringe. And we'll go back to my the thirty eight and nine example we worked to or 39 and eight. 39 base, $8 in fringes. What if I have an employee that makes $40 an hour? This is is their normal rate. Well, okay. So instead of 39 and 8, I'm I for them, it could be 40 and 7. I can pay more. If I pay more of the base rate, I can go into the fringe. What I can't do is the opposite. I can't say, well, I wanna provide $12 in fringes and I'll take the, you know, the excess fringe, the $4, you know, above the 8, and I'll take that off the base rate. I I can't go that direction, but I can go the other direction. I could could pay you $47 an hour and zero infringes, but I can't pay you $31 an hour and 16 infringes. Alright. So there's a yeah. A lot more questions. These are great questions. I think we've covered a number of them. You know, some of them we're gonna have to follow-up. I know we're gonna run out of time here very quickly. I got a couple questions here. We're very interested in in looking at computers to help us manage this. We currently use QuickBooks. So, yeah, we'll be more than happy if you checked yes to be contacted, we'll reach out. If not, we will certainly the the fact that you put a question in, we will certainly certainly reach out to you from that. Alright. So that's just great. These are just scan and see if I got any last minute questions in here, but I think this has been fantastic. A lot of great questions. I've got to as many as we could in in the time allotted here today. Any we didn't get to, we will certainly follow-up individually offline. Anybody that has to be contacted, we'll follow-up. And then we'll certainly look forward to having conversations with a lot of you after today's webinar. So once again, I encourage you to watch us back. Check out the on demand recording. Check out all the other great content in the Construction Accounting University. And certainly be on the lookout to, for our next session, coming up on May 5. So wanna I thank everybody for their time today and look forward to seeing you on another webinar in the very near future. Thanks, and have a great day.