Running the Business · Part 2

Public works: DIR registration, prevailing wage, certified payroll, and apprentices. A separate world; know it before you bid

A school district's plumbing repair, a city's park restroom, a county building's water heater: public work looks like private work and is governed by an entirely different body of law. Above $1,000 you must pay the prevailing wage the state sets for the plumber's craft in that county, which is usually far above the private market. Above $25,000 you must be registered with the Department of Industrial Relations before you bid, submit certified payroll records for every worker every week, and, above $30,000, employ apprentices at a fixed ratio. This lesson lays out the thresholds, the registration, the paperwork, and the arithmetic, so the decision to bid public work is made with the rules in front of you rather than discovered in the first payroll audit.