This week the guys round our their series on estimating and bidding by talking about certified payroll and how to avoid any hiccups when bidding certified payroll projects.

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The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.

https://www.preferredflooringmi.com

https://www.stuartandassociates.com

what's up

I usually say what's up flooring family I'm going to say what's up skilled professionals out there

uh welcome to the Huddle we're here every Tuesday at 3 P.M Central

where typically Daniel Jose and myself discuss maintaining forward progress in

your flooring career so we're in our last the last part of a of

a kind of a three-part series although it's kind of listed as two uh in

estimating and bidding we've pretty much went over everything but to round it out we're going to talk

about certified payroll projects or the Davis space at bacon act and

um how you as an installer as a subcontract installer uh in particular

uh should you know some of the things you should know uh when when looking at

these types of projects and the paperwork and the requirements that are are there so

Daniel we were chatting offline you guys how do you guys approach your certified

payroll projects or David's bacon projects or do you avoid them all the all the way around we have typically

avoided them all together because uh over here in our area we're the only ones and this is where we kind of had

that little conversation right where like we're the only ones around the area that actually pay our employees

on a W-2 and uh around here it's a lot of the other guys from what I've gathered over

the years seem to think that it's okay to not pay themselves those rates since

they are the owners so there will be like a chain of a sub of a sub of a sub like

everyone on that project is typically their own business or there's just one guy on there and then I don't know how

they get away with it but no one so they all claim yourself up a sub and

and right either that or they they have a team there and it's just nothing is kept track of how

it should which is crazy because you know based on the conversation that I've had with some of these contractors

everything is like super documented so I have no idea how

they do it or what they do but um on some of the projects when my brother and I were working by ourselves

that's kind of how we did it um and the companies that we were doing the work for that's what they told us so they it

was pretty much you don't have to pay yourselves the rates just fill this out and let us know you know the

how much you were paying yourself so that way we can turn it in and that's what we were doing

but that was just you know us by ourselves so I haven't that's something that we

really haven't touched and we've seen you know with the Freedom of Information Act some of the rates that these uh

companies are going in at for prevailing wages

it's like they're going in at under normal rates and how do you even

pay these guys well first off higher rates like that

the the so let's talk about a couple of things a is

[Music] um when you're looking at a certified payroll job

you got to get the wage determination sheet first that wage termination sheet varies so

greatly between counties and jurisdictions um giving an example we got a a large

certified payroll project going on up at Fort Riley and

I think the tile on their pays uh the the wages

58 something 58 62 I believe somewhere

around there so you know if you're if you're looking at

a project and you do and you can install a hundred square foot with you by yourself in a day

and you're and you you have to and and you're gonna cost you know let's call it

fifty dollars an hour well the easy math that's you know on a eight

hour day let's call it real close to 500 bucks and your tile price per square foot is

going to have to be north of five dollars a foot if your average output's 100 square feet

for you to make any any profit outside of paying for yourself and that's not even having a helper

uh or or an apprentice so you know you got to look at these things and and

especially if you're being offered to do a certified payroll job by the square

foot and then you're going to fill out the U.S Department of Labor form which is the certified payroll form

so that's how we do it mainly is we'll have the sub whoever owns that that

subcontracting company um you know they're gonna fill out their own certified payroll forms for each

person that they paid and all the proof of payment you've seen those forms before haven't you Jose or I meant

Daniel yeah Jose was actually just right here he said that he's going to be signing in in a second so just keep a

lookout for him I was putting it in the chat but yeah we filled them out before and

let me see if I can share um Ashton if you're there let me share

let me see if I can share my screen

um

I think you just gotta go up and to participants and make me a host

[Music] s and and what you're talking about too you know that goes beyond just

the certified payroll stuff it's you can get all your rates if you break it down that way to make sure that you're going

to be profitable it's good I'd be looking I I that's a great

Point Daniel is like consider that on all your jobs but particularly when

you're talking about and the reason I say the wage determination is so important is

because the the fact is

in some areas the tile lab for example a tile journeyman tile installer is 29

dollars and in some areas it's 60 bucks I mean it varies that much yeah I think over

here for the tile guys it's I think around 56. and then and then you always have to

look at where our as a you know carpet or resilient Guy

where do you fit in because you're gonna have to go based on something else because we're not in

there yeah most times we're not in there every once in a while you'll find floor layer

on the wage determination otherwise you get lumped in with the painters or

something like that or Carpenters or something because I think over here we're ran with the Carpenters so

you gotta you gotta be careful how you're classifying yourself yeah and you got to make sure you're classifying

correctly too here's a a little tip if you're going to do a certified payroll job if your helper or your your

Apprentice is installing tile and the Corps of Engineers puts in their daily

report that this guy's a tile installer and then you turn in your certified payroll and I'll show you what that

looks like real quick what a report looks like for our audience this is can you see my screen okay

yeah I can see it yeah yeah so this is you know you got your work classification right here and your hours

worked standard and over time each day and then the rate of pay and then the gross earned and then all

your tax stuff and total deductions so this isn't

if if your core of engineer guy labels your Apprentice as a tile Setter which

is typically what they're classified as the or what the classific uh

classifications called within the certified payroll wage determination uh and not a tile finisher which is

typically you know 15 dollars less or so uh if they see them set in tile and they

report them as a tall Setter for those hours they're going to call your blood I

mean they're going to make you redo your certified payroll and pay him the difference that has actually happened to

us where we had a really good Apprentice that was set in tile alongside the

journeyman installers and they classified him as a tile Setter and we

had to go back and pay him tile Setter wages for those hours that he was actually installing

another piece of info is this is a daily work classification

uh or weekly you know you the I guess what I'm saying is this is a weekly work

classification so you could get tied into that rate of pay for a whole week so

the key here is this form is not incredibly complicated to fill out

but you can see it breaks everything down so you got to be the sub has to be

paying their employees as employees and keeping out the FICA taxes and the

withholding tax and any other deductions and then you know you've got to have

they've got to be able to track and provide um proof of all this as well so that

when you get over here you know you got your final amounts

so anyway I thought it'd be helpful just to see what a certified form looks like for those of you who have not

so typically we're going to have our our sub fill that out uh now if we're having

our in-house guys do it then our employee W2 employee installers then we're going to have our office manager

will fill this out based off of their mobile timesheets

yeah I think this is you know some some good information for the guys because a

lot of them you know when you really look at the big picture they don't even keep track of everything in like QuickBooks or anything a lot a lot of

the guys that I you know know personally that around the area their boxer

receipts and you know just putting it in a folder and giving it to uh an

accountant at the end of the year which at least they have an accountant I'll give them that yeah yeah at least they've they've taken some

steps there and there's software out there like you said QuickBooks go career does a lot of

this um you know a fair amount of the work we're going to

be even adding some more features for installers to have more financial tools at their disposal

um or seat capturing and that kind of thing where you can keep a loose set of books if you don't have a full

accounting system like uh QuickBooks but so I guess the biggest

um pieced all this that I wanted to make sure I conveyed to anybody looking at a certified payroll job is to consider

uh the the paperwork when you're you know gonna look at doing a job

you're gonna have to report and a sub of a sub of a sub of a sub the problem is

then you're stuck in with your your GC typically has insurance requirements and

not everybody's going to have you know for a big project say a five million dollar umbrella or something hell we

have a I think an eight million dollar umbrella so you got these big requirements for for jobs that

I mean a lot of Subs aren't going to pay four or five or ten thousand dollars for a year of of liability insurance right

for especially for one project and the other thing is don't get bullied into doing these projects from some of these

contractors because uh we've been in the situation before to where they have us

start on one of these projects and then it isn't until we turn in a bill and then they're like well where's

your certified payroll and you know luckily it was just my brother and I at this point but it's like what what are

you talking about like this should have been communicated way in advance

so just if you think that it's one of those projects if it's on a government

installation whether it's a fort or an Air Force Base you're about a 95 percent

maybe even 100 I don't know that I've ever done a job on on a government

installation we've done the FBI headquarters we've done tons of work at

our air force base and the VA um you know most of those jobs are going

to be certified payroll so before you bid a job ask for the wage determination sheet which that's my point find out

what you're going to have to pay the people that are working for you on that job and find out how you know and I

showed you the the Department of Labor form there's actually a second sheet to

that you can just Google it and it'll come up for you but the the key here is to know what you're getting into and

then consider security it's going to take like when we're going on to an Air Force Base a lot of times

it takes half hour just for the guys to get through the gate and so make sure you're thinking through

the inefficiencies that the government brings to the table I hate to say that don't shoot me Mr government but fact is

is that there's a there they they bring in efficiencies and red tape that when

they come on to the when they're part of the job site um your production will go down I

promise you that and if you're not used to working on government jobs um depending on the core of engineers

and if they're involved or not um I can tell you that one of the things

is inspections do happen on these jobs I I honestly kind of wish this happened on

all projects but uh where we could call in for inspection uh and that we had to

get that written off as part of our our processes in flooring it would add a

level of uh professionalism that the GCS wouldn't be able to push you around you

know you're you're getting you're getting your inspections but for example we just did a set of really big

bathrooms and it had to be waterproofed everywhere and the prep had to be

inspected prior to waterproofing so we had block walls we had to grind down and

get smooth and level and so that had to be inspected prior to waterproofing once

the Corps of Engineers signed off on that then we could start our waterproofing when that's done it got

flood tested and inspected and then when that was done we could finally start installing and it took 48 Hours on both

cases to get those inspections scheduled and in so we lost two days worth of work while we were waiting for one of the

core people to come in and inspect so I don't want to scare people off I'm just trying to give you the reality of what

these jobs require so you know just take that all into account

when you're looking at doing a project like that for a you know one of the large flooring

companies or even if you're considering doing it direct with the GC and you got a good relationship and you're going to

do a job direct with the GC that's fine too just make sure that you you know

have the wage determination realize that Davis bacon and certified payroll go

hand in hand so those two terms are there are other certified payroll jobs

that are not Davis bacon but all Davis bacon jobs are certified payroll right

yep and um with some of these GCS I've talked to some women you know they have an entire

you know Department really I don't know a few people but their accounting team if if you need if you have any questions

on this you can come in and we will pretty much go break it down for you so that way we

know that you know you you're turning in something that we're going to be able to use because if you turn if you're not

keeping track of it they can also get in trouble yeah that's a good point um the fact is is it's in their best

interest for your certified payroll to be accurate and come through so most of them will work with you because

you know it holds up their payment like one small sub can hold up a

multi-million dollar payment just because their certified payroll isn't in or correct or done or whatever so

you know there it just there's more pressure obviously at that point so make

sure you're informed that's what I'm trying to get out here make sure you're informed about the processes and what is

needed um I'm I'm hoping that we're conveying the uh pertinent details but you're

going to have to continue on with whoever you're working for whether it's the GC or the flooring company to get

like we help our subs get our certified payroll done because we have to have it done which the GC has to have it done so

everybody's in This Together uh that is probably the one benefit of it

um but outside of that I would say you know consider again your wage

determination and what the per square foot for labor is and and make sure that

makes sense you know to your daily production time and how much work you think you can get

done in a day um if you're an employee installer working for a flooring company you know

we give our guys some goals to hit and things like that um

because obviously everybody has to stay profitable we got to keep the lights on and people fed and and you got to make

profit for that so um you know I think outside of that the other thing to

consider that I brought up and I think is really important you just don't think about it is the lost time I mean an hour

a day is not excessive to figure in dead time on a project like that and it's and it's not even with uh some of these

certified payroll stuff we were working at uh one of the factories over here they do baby formula

and every like couldn't have any stickers on anything no stickers on hard

hats I was like dang every other job we got to put a sticker on there for safety so go buy some new hard hats then you go

in there up this has uh some wood on it you can't bring that in there and then every tool that is in your toolbox you

have to take out and wipe down before you bring it in the job site yeah that's

yeah I mean that it's worth noting that this is really

about investigating what you're doing like understanding what you're doing

um because to your point we did a we did a MRI room where they were they

kid they weren't shutting the machine down and we had to use ceramic knives with ceramic blades we found a

ceramic hand roller we had the hand roll the whole thing uh that's all made out

of ceramic the entire piece is made out of ceramic um

so yeah there's other crazy uh job application uh things out there or

project requirements out there but um yeah knowing the project is what it

comes down to or at least knowing the requirements and that's really what this is is pointing to is like make sure

you're you're informed on a certified payroll job know where you're at and how you have to report and what you're going

to get paid um I think the best way to do it from if

you know for even a sub pay yourself a weekly amount

uh you know whatever the wage determination is above and beyond and then

um pay pay all your people and the difference is yours right I mean that's

how it works so keeping keeping um

you know I I don't see how a sub of a sub of a sub Works in this scenario and

um I'm sure some guys have figured out how to make it work but that's it's just so messy I can't imagine a GC being real

happy about getting three four different certified payrolls from one company to

do a job but um yeah that's kind of my spill today was just really based around certified

payroll and just the one piece that we didn't get to in the previous discussions and I think there's so much

government work going on it's one of the strongest sectors right now I'm not

saying it's going to continue but I'm just saying right now there's I don't know how it is up in your area but

Across the Nation from a an overall standpoint it seems to be very strong but it does some people at some of the

meetings like um through the the city and the Chamber and this um

a couple of the people in there said I only do government jobs that's like they

started out as private and then once they got into the government jobs they're like that's all I do and all my

referrals come from Strictly government jobs and it's like

that's crazy well if you get somebody who specializes in the paperwork and it's really good I

mean the the my wife does it for us at Stewart and Associates and she's

she's a machine you know um if you're really good at it there's a

good opportunity because not there's a lot of people that just say forget it I'm walking I don't want to mess with it

and so you can have some good margins on those jobs and

um and still you know employees like it like our guys love when they're getting

paid you know another 10 bucks an hour or something to do some work

um as long as you're efficient and you know what you're doing it's not a bad

business it's just you got to know um and be aware and if you are then and

you and you're willing to jump in like those people and and just stick with it um you know if you if you can make a few

more points and you don't have to get beat I mean it's certainly on a job if

you have a Stan if you have a school job on a air force or on a say on a fort you

know an army base uh or that Services the army base and then you have a school

job elsewhere you're gonna have a lot more competition elsewhere I guarantee you that so if you can get good at it

and you want to get good at it you want to invest the time and effort it takes to make sure that you're crossing your

t's and Dot in your eyes then go for it because you can make a little bit of extra money which yeah that's what she

said she said that she got into it not really knowing what what it entailed and then as soon as she got that that first

project and then um she got some you know different certifications behind her like being a woman-owned business and

stuff like that and then that just kind of turned into you know I only want to use you and yeah

we know if you can get those certifications like the small business the minority the

women owned um or stack those up uh you could you there's a lot of government jobs that

have you know 15 to 30 percent up up to 30 percent of a job

uh sometimes it and each one's a little bit different but as far as the requirements but say up to 30 percent of

the job has to be performed by minority women a disadvantaged uh company that

they say yeah if you're out there and you haven't looked into any of these certifications that's definitely something that you

should do because um you know even with us for for a while it was like why would we want to get

this sort of like minority business certification and stuff like that and it's like well they're there for a

reason right if we can use it to our advantage why not hey man amen if you if

you if there's a program out there that will benefit your company do not be too

proud to go do that excuse my French seriously I'll do it and and and

take advantage of I mean it's there someone's going to use it you might as

well there's I don't see I'm seeing it a lot outside of even the government work to where you know these private

companies want to hit a certain percentage of you know disadvantage

adversity yeah so even if you're not going to go for the government work it's it's worth a

shot just to see what else they can bring to the table yep yep I agree and and so you

um your local chamber help you with that yeah we're we're still in the process

right now so through this through the city of Grand Rapids we have what they call a micro local business Enterprise

which um you're only allowed to be in it for 10 years and you have to be

hey he's there and you have to be you know a certain size once you hit a certain dollar amount you're no longer

eligible so it's the same thing with the small uh the small business

the chamber is actually has been um they rolled out a program to where

they're paying to for minorities to get their MBE or wbe you know whatever it is

so the MBE is uh minority business Enterprise wbe is women then they have

the disadvantaged and you know there's there's multiple people

don't we don't know what you said because you're breaking up I'm lbe

just talked about that one but yeah there's a bunch of different uh

you got you know service disabled veteran indian-owned yeah and American the crazy

thing is right now when the the chamber is helping us out and we're trying to

get it but as a Mexican back in the day they wanted to

classify and put us put uh White on our birth certificates

so now I had to go back and they're asking for like my mom's father's

information it's like I don't know like how do you cut through this red tape with stuff like that I have no idea but

yeah I've never done it so I'm interesting it's interesting to listen to you talk about it and yeah so if you

look at our birth certificates it says that we're White well gentlemen we don't speak Spanish we

don't speak Spanish my little run with it I guess well um so but the process

outside of that has it been your chamber would you re you know would you uh

recommend that whoever it may be on this call or or uh consuming our content here

if they're looking to do uh minority status of some sort would you recommend

they go to the chamber and start there I I think the the chamber in general is a

great place to go I mean especially if you're doing a lot of commercial work because you're getting in with all the

builders and stuff there and which is a great place to to meet other

people right because we always talk about networking it's just like that except for it's not

in the industry it's who else can I work with around my local area so like I'll

I'll go to to events he'll go to events he'll join some groups in there they have

like CEO roundtables it's just a great place and then with

the with the with the certification stuff like the MBE they they have their their programs

uh to where they they'll help you out any questions that you have but it this

one is actually through the the city of Grand Rapids is paying for us to get

ours and they hooked up with um a different company

so they're pretty much just the bridge they're like we'll get all the information together set you up with

your own person point of contact and then they help you out so the answer the

short answer is yes chamber and don't go to it wanting to to

um explore becoming a minority-owned business of some sort whether that's

women or or uh race or if it's um service disabled veteran or what any

of those programs get with your local chamber um and and just start there I think

that's probably the best place to start it is because we we met the guy from the

city of Grand Rapids at a chamber event so great working

well it is good networking as well and hey guys sorry I'm so late but man I tell you what switching phone providers

make sure when you're doing your estimate that you calculate some of that man but um

um well we were just talking we we just went over certified payroll Davis bacon

stuff as he was on Facebook listening I was listening on Facebook the whole time

all right well that's kind of the the whole Crux of this uh this episode was

just rounding out the last piece of information that that you know we've hit

bidding and estimating pretty hard a couple of episodes and just kind of

rounded out if you know as you heard while he was on Facebook just being

aware of what you're what you're bidding and uh yes and and know how to follow

the guidelines because they will hold your money 100 guaranteed 100 certified

payroll done and you're the one that's supposed to do it you will not be paid so

um just consider all that and um yeah so

and then we got into a little bit of the of how you become certified uh you know small business or women owned or

minority owned or whatever just because it was a natural kind of uh Segway

effect because we also because we like go on tangents yeah go off on a tangent

it was a good time it was a good one if if you're gonna be you know we are talking about certified payroll so if

you want an advantage of getting some of that work and you feel like you can do that paperwork that I showed it's really

not that complicated but it it can be daunting a little bit um you might as well if you're a

minority or you're a woman you might as well take advantage of that those programs and then you can get even more

government work um and if you're comfortable doing those the certified payrolls and

all that stuff like we talked earlier I mean you can make a a good living doing

that so even if you're not going to be bidding it direct and you have those

certifications with you they the company that is going to be using you can

actually use that certification too and it accounts towards it so yeah so yeah exactly that's a great Point too uh

Daniel is like if if I'm Stuart and Associates doing a government job with

XYZ GC and I hire preferred to do the labor for

me than I get to that their status as long as it's

I can prove this their status counts to the DC's overall percentage status so me

as a flooring company having a minority uh subcontractors that are certified

minority subcontractors I should say uh can give you a bit of an advantage and

I'm just an old white guy gotta take it when you can right that's

right well that's about it for this episode guys uh it actually is shorter even

though every other time I've said that we we tend to fill up the whole hour but

um for short for me sorry again guys I'm sorry about the lack of communication you're good he's not I couldn't hang up

on him man couldn't hang up on him two and a half hours a day well I'll tell you this if if uh

if you were the only one that missed you know I'd pretty much have to shoot myself in the foot if I gave you any

great grief over it so um hey there is one thing too but that I

want to add certified payroll I do remember when Daniel and I first saw split up and went

on our own there we had an opportunity to work with a company um who all they did was a lot of government work and I remember the the

booklet that they gave me of instructions that that were required to follow was about this thick right here

and if I told you guys that going through that and just kind of skim skimming it a little bit didn't deter me

from working with them I'd be lying because once I started reading into it and and it was a foreign language I

pretty much just said nope not for me and I didn't even entertain it so

don't don't be too afraid to to involve yourself into reading the information that that is presented to you right like

I didn't take the time to go through it with a fine-tooth comb and I think if I did it might have approached it a little

bit differently it might have educated me a little bit more so well that kind of goes back to how we

are as humans and our mindset stuff I mean you're if it looks really painful

we just don't do it and you know you you end up

eventually if you end up getting through one you you kind of are like well that wasn't near as bad as I thought it was

going to be um so yeah like I said earlier I mean if you if you can do it and you feel

comfortable doing all the the paperwork by all means jump in don't let any

reluctancy drive you just get to know it I mean a lot of this is just not just

this but everything we talk about is about being teachable and being willing to learn and change

that's that's 90 of what the podcast really talks about just how can you

improve well you can't improve if you don't take some risks and change a little bit and that's the same thing

here it's it's an opportunity judge it for yourself uh and you know determine the risk

factors that we've talked about on this episode and if you feel comfortable with it dive feet first don't be scared of

the book right everything's an opportunity you just

gotta look at it that way and every opportunity is a learning moment for sure well speaking of learning

moments I hope everybody got some uh very specific information but uh I

hope everybody found some some value in this if you did please consider giving us a like subscribing to our YouTube

channel uh if you're watching us on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or any

of the uh different you know media Outlets you know consider giving us a

thumbs up so Eduardo said that dang it's this big [Laughter]

that's funny Kevin uh Kevin said that he's stopping by in two

weeks figure he'd give us a heads up this time

we'll have the box set up for you

all right guys well without uh I guess that'll end this podcast here a

little bit early but uh I appreciate you jumping on late Jose hi there's my job

and uh thanks Daniel I appreciate you guys and and

um we'll see you guys next week and uh probably chat in between so all right

thanks Paul good one all right thanks guys see ya

thank you