Looking to Streamline Your Prevailing Wage Workflow?

Yes. We manage both California DIR eCPR portal submissions and federal Davis-Bacon certified payroll requirements. Our team is experienced with multi-jurisdictional projects that require compliance with both state and federal prevailing wage laws simultaneously.

Absolutely. Every client engagement is staffed with a primary analyst and a designated backup. This ensures continuity of service during vacations, illness, or high-volume periods — your deadlines are never at risk due to staffing gaps.

Labor Compliance Pros works nationwide, with active coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio, and Texas, plus federal Davis-Bacon projects anywhere in the U.S. We handle state prevailing wage programs, Section 3 / HUD reporting, California DIR submissions, and IRA prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements.

We work inside the platforms your agency and project already use — LCPtracker, eMars, eComply, the California DIR eCPR portal, eBacon, and Procore — so filings land where reviewers expect them, in the format they require.

Yes. LCP trains contractor and subcontractor teams on prevailing wage and certified payroll compliance — Davis-Bacon requirements, California DIR rules, certified payroll preparation and submission, and what to do when an audit letter arrives. Training is available for client teams as part of an engagement and as standalone sessions.

STW is Skilled & Trained Workforce: California's requirement (Public Contract Code §§ 2600–2603) that a set percentage of the skilled journeyperson workforce on covered public works projects be graduates of approved apprenticeship programs. It is enforced through monthly STW compliance reports. LCP prepares and reviews those reports.

LCPtracker is the compliance tracking platform LCP uses to collect, review, and track certified payroll and compliance documents across every tier of a project, so deficiencies are flagged and closed in one place.

No. Paying above the required prevailing rate is never a deficiency, and no justification is needed for paying more. Only a package that falls below the required rate for the classification and hours worked is a rate deficiency.

It depends on the jurisdiction, and the two rules are not interchangeable. On Pennsylvania jobs, bona fide plan contributions stay flat on overtime hours, but cash paid in lieu of fringe is part of the regular rate — so it is effectively paid at 1.5× on overtime hours. Under federal Davis-Bacon rules (29 CFR 5.32), both plan contributions and cash equivalents are excluded from the regular rate. Do not apply the federal rule to Pennsylvania work.

The Davis-Bacon Act is the federal law requiring workers on federally funded or assisted construction contracts over $2,000 to be paid no less than the locally prevailing wage and fringe benefits for their classification. It is enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor. Davis-Bacon and Related Acts (DBRA) extend the same requirements to construction financed through other federal programs, such as HUD and federal highway funding.

Prevailing wage is the minimum total hourly package — a base wage rate plus fringe benefits — that must be paid to workers in each classification on a covered public works or federally funded project. The rates are set for the project in a wage determination, by locality and classification. Many states have their own prevailing wage laws alongside the federal Davis-Bacon Act.

A certified payroll report is the weekly report every contractor and subcontractor on a covered project must submit listing each worker, their classification, hours worked each day, wage and fringe rates, deductions, and net pay. It is signed with a statement of compliance certifying the information is true and workers were paid correctly. That signature is what makes errors on a CPR a legal exposure, not just a paperwork mistake.

Fringe benefits are the portion of the prevailing wage package above the base hourly rate. A contractor can meet it through bona fide benefit plans — health insurance, pension, vacation and holiday funds, approved training funds — or by paying the amount as cash wages. The credit a contractor can claim is calculated and annualized under the applicable rules, so a package that looks sufficient on one project can fall short when an auditor spreads the credit across all hours worked.

The California DIR is the Department of Industrial Relations, the state agency that oversees California prevailing wage law. It handles public works contractor registration, publishes wage determinations, runs the eCPR submission system, and — through the Labor Commissioner — enforces prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements on California public works.

eCPR is the California DIR's electronic certified payroll records system. Contractors on California public works upload their weekly certified payroll records to the DIR through eCPR, where awarding bodies and the Labor Commissioner can review them. Submissions must be timely and in the required format — a payroll that exists but was never uploaded is treated as not filed.

WH-347 is the U.S. Department of Labor's payroll form for Davis-Bacon projects. It combines the weekly payroll record — workers, classifications, daily hours, rates, deductions, and net pay — with the signed Statement of Compliance on its reverse side. Contractors may use their own payroll format, but the WH-347 remains the standard reviewers measure submissions against.

An apprenticeship ratio is the maximum number of apprentices allowed on a job site relative to journeymen in the same craft, set by the registered apprenticeship program's standards. Only apprentices registered in an approved program may be paid the apprentice rate. Workers in excess of the ratio — or apprentices who are not registered — must be paid the full journeyman prevailing rate for the hours worked.

Section 3 is a HUD requirement that employment, training, and contracting opportunities generated by HUD-assisted housing and community development projects benefit low- and very low-income residents, to the greatest extent feasible. Compliance is tracked through labor-hour benchmarks for Section 3 workers and documented reporting to the funding agency. It runs alongside — not instead of — prevailing wage obligations on the same project.

A project labor agreement is a pre-hire collective bargaining agreement negotiated for one specific construction project. It sets wages, benefits, work rules, and dispute procedures for every contractor and subcontractor on the project, union and non-union alike. PLAs frequently carry their own apprenticeship, skilled-and-trained-workforce, and compliance reporting obligations, which apply in addition to the underlying prevailing wage law.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) ties enhanced clean-energy tax credits — typically five times the base credit — to meeting prevailing wage and apprenticeship (PWA) requirements during construction. Contractors must pay Davis-Bacon-level prevailing wages, meet apprenticeship labor-hour and ratio requirements, and keep the records to prove it. If the requirements are missed, the taxpayer must make correction payments and penalties to protect the credit.

AB 2134 is cited in clean-energy and public-works project and funding documents alongside skilled-and-trained-workforce and IRA tax-credit requirements. Because compliance obligations are ultimately set by the documents governing your project, what matters is the requirement as written into your contract and funding terms. LCP reads those documents, maps the cited workforce and reporting obligations, and monitors every subcontractor tier against them.

Regular payroll is how you pay your employees: it calculates wages, taxes, and deductions and issues pay. Certified payroll is a sworn report to the awarding agency proving workers on a covered project were classified correctly and paid at least the prevailing wage and fringe for every hour. Regular payroll answers "did we run payroll?" — certified payroll answers "can we prove, under certification, that we paid the legally required rates?"

A wage determination is the official schedule of prevailing wage and fringe rates, by classification, that applies to a specific project. Federal determinations are issued by the U.S. Department of Labor and incorporated into the contract; California determinations are published by the DIR. Using the wrong determination — or an outdated one — is one of the most common sources of project-wide underpayment findings.

Restitution is the back pay owed to workers when they were paid less than the required prevailing wage package — whether through a wrong classification, a short fringe credit, or an incorrect rate. It is calculated worker by worker, paid to the workers, and documented for the agency. Agencies can withhold contract payments until restitution is made, and penalties may be assessed on top of it.

Audit defense is the work of responding to an agency audit or investigation of a project's payroll and compliance records: assembling certified payrolls, fringe benefit records, timecards, and apprenticeship documentation, answering findings, correcting genuine errors, and challenging findings that are wrong. LCP's audit defense work is built on the weekly records created during the project — which is why documentation built during the job, not reconstructed after an audit letter arrives, decides most outcomes.