The agency pays, and pays on schedule
Public owners are not the customer who disappears when the invoice comes due. The budget was approved before the job was advertised. Payment terms are set in the contract, not negotiated after the fact.
Someone just asked you to bid a job funded with public money.
If you have never done one, the rules look like a different business than the one you run. They are not. They are just unfamiliar, and they punish first mistakes in a way private work never does.
We take contractors through that first job, start to finish, before the number goes in.
You already know how to build. That is not the part that goes wrong.
What goes wrong is everything around the work. Which job titles your crew falls under, what each of them has to be paid, how benefits count toward that, and what has to be written down and turned in while the job runs.
None of it is complicated once someone shows you. All of it is expensive to learn by trial and error.
01 Why bother
This work is worth having, and that is exactly why it is worth doing right.
Contractors do not avoid publicly funded jobs because the work is hard. They avoid them because nobody ever walked them through the rules.
Fewer contractors bid against you
Plenty of good builders never make it onto the bid list, because they were never able to get comfortable with the paperwork side. The ones who do face a shorter list and steadier backlog than they are used to.
There is money most first timers never find
Part of what you owe each worker on these jobs can be paid as cash, or it can be put toward real benefits instead. Handled the second way, it costs you less and is worth more to your crew. Most contractors doing their first job never learn there was a choice.
02 Where the money is
The same dollar is worth about twice as much when it goes to benefits instead of the paycheck.
Tens of thousands
A year, on a ten person crew, from one decision made correctly
On a publicly funded job you owe every worker a set amount per hour. Part of it is their wage. The other part is meant for benefits, and you get to decide how to deliver it.
Pay it as cash on the check and it counts as wages, so every cost that rides on wages rides on it too. Put it toward a benefit plan instead and those costs come off, and the worker gets more value out of the same dollar.
The size of the savings depends most on your insurance rates, not on tax rates. Two contractors with the same crew can land in very different places. We work it out on your actual numbers rather than an average, because the average is not what you pay.
What a worker actually receives per dollar you spend
A simple illustration, not a quote for your company.
There are conditions attached, and they are the part that has to be right. A plan that looks fine on paper can fail to count at all, which turns a saving into money you still owe. Checking that is the first thing we do.
03 What trips people up
Almost nobody gets caught for bad work. They get caught on paperwork.
These are the three that account for most of the trouble we see. None of them are about how you build.
01
Using the wrong job title
Published job classifications rarely match what your trade calls itself, and picking the wrong one means paying the wrong rate. Get it wrong low and you owe the difference on every hour worked. Get it wrong high and you lost the bid for no reason.
02
Counting benefits that do not count
What you spend on benefits can offset what you owe, but only if it is set up a particular way and only for the right number of hours. This is the single most common expensive mistake, and it usually surfaces months later when it is much harder to fix.
03
Falling behind on records
These jobs require regular reports while the work is happening, and there are short deadlines to produce records when somebody asks. Penalties add up daily and per worker, so a filing problem nobody caught early stops being small very quickly.
The good news is that all three are decided before you start. Every one of them is a choice you make while the numbers can still change, which is why we would rather talk to you before the bid than after the award.
04 How we help
We do the homework. You bid the job and build it.
Every engagement follows the same path. How far along it you go depends on where you are and how much of it you want handled.
Should you bid this at all
We look at the project, your crew and how you are set up today, and tell you honestly whether it is a good first one. Sometimes the answer is to wait for a better fit, and we would rather say so.
What you actually have to pay
We find the official rates that govern your job, confirm which ones apply to your crew, and check whether they are scheduled to go up while you are still on site. That last part catches people on longer jobs.
What it costs you, fully loaded
We build the real hourly cost of your labor using your own insurance rates and your own crew, so the number you put on the bid is one you can stand behind and still make money on.
Whether your benefits are helping
We read what you already have and tell you whether it counts, what it is worth, and what would have to change if it does not. This is usually where the money is.
Getting your office ready
Before day one we train whoever handles your paperwork on what is due, when it is due and who owns it, and leave them a calendar so the job runs without us standing over it.
You keep control of your own shop
Your payroll stays with whoever runs it now. Your paperwork goes out under your name, on your schedule. We are not another vendor to be tied to, and nothing we do puts us between you and your crew or your agency. When the job is running, your own people know how to run it.
Talk to someone who is already doing it
We can put you on the phone with the owner of a construction company who is running this kind of work right now. Not a consultant. Somebody who has been exactly where you are and came out the other side.
Nothing is sold on that call. You ask the things you would not ask an advisor: what actually broke, what it cost them, what they would do differently, and how the money really moved.
The operator is an independent third party rather than someone who works for us, and what they tell you is their own experience. We arrange the introduction and match them to your trade. Availability is limited and it gets booked around their job, not ours.
05 Who this is for
Most of the contractors we work with look something like this.
None of it is a requirement. If you are close, or not sure, the first conversation is free and it costs you nothing to find out.
Usually
A crew somewhere between a handful and a few dozen
Doing
Private, residential, homeowners association or commercial work
And now
Looking at a publicly funded job for the first time
Best time to call
Before the bid, while the numbers can still move
Building
Anywhere in the country, with particular depth in California
Trade
Any of them
California is where we are deepest, and that is useful to you wherever you build. Publicly funded work has the same shape everywhere: a published rate you have to meet, rules about which job title covers which worker, and paperwork due while the job runs. The specifics differ by state. California runs the most demanding version of these rules in the country, and it is the one we know best, so the habits we bring to a job anywhere were built against a harder standard than most states set.
Any trade. Electrical, mechanical, plumbing, concrete, framing, roofing, painting, glazing, landscape, demolition, earthwork, low voltage, fire protection, and anything else that shows up on a job site. Nothing we do is built around one trade.
You are good at what you do. You have just never run into this particular set of rules. We handle the rules. You handle the building.
06 Questions
Questions we get early
What does prevailing wage actually mean?
On construction paid for with public money, the government publishes a required rate for each type of work. You pay at least that rate no matter what you normally pay. The rate has two parts: an hourly wage, and an additional amount meant for benefits. You owe the whole thing, but you get some say in how the benefits part is delivered, and that is where most of the opportunity sits.
How much notice do you need before a bid?
Sooner is better and there is rarely too much time. Most of what we do is only useful while your number can still change. That said, we are used to short fuses. If you are days out, tell us the date and we will tell you honestly what we can get done in that window and what will have to wait until after the award.
We already have a payroll company. Do we still need you?
Usually yes, and they are not competing with us. A payroll company processes what you tell it to process. Deciding which job title each worker falls under, what your benefits are actually worth against what you owe, and what the job costs you fully loaded happens before payroll ever sees it. We work that part out and hand your payroll provider clear instructions.
Is this only for big jobs?
No. Small projects can fall under lighter requirements, but there are traps in how the size gets measured, and the wage rules generally still apply either way. Tell us the project value and what your piece of it is and we will tell you where you land before you spend anything.
The job has federal money in it. Does that change things?
It can, and it is worth checking early rather than assuming. Federal funding brings its own set of requirements that can sit on top of whatever your state already requires, and where they overlap you generally follow whichever is stricter. Not every federal dollar triggers it, though, so this is one to confirm rather than guess at.
What happens if we already made a mistake?
Tell us anyway. Problems found early and fixed on your own initiative are treated very differently from problems somebody else finds later. We will tell you plainly what we think you are looking at, and if it is a matter for an attorney we will say so rather than take it on ourselves.
07 Get started
Send us the project. We will tell you whether it is worth bidding.
There is no charge for the first conversation and nothing gets sold on it. You tell us what landed on your desk, and we tell you what you are looking at.
- What the project is and who is paying for it
- Your trade, and which state the work is in
- Roughly how big it is and what your piece would be
- When the bid is due
We work with contractors across the country. If the job is in California, you are in the part of this we know best.
Write to us
A few sentences is plenty. If it is easier to just send over whatever the agency or the general contractor sent you, do that instead and we will read it.
A person here writes back, usually within two business days.