With all the people out there claiming to be prevailing wage experts, how do you know if they really are? And what if they’re a Davis-Bacon expert,  does that also make them an expert in your state’s prevailing wage? We have had the pleasure of knowing and working with quite a few prevailing wage and davis-bacon experts over the years – people who truly have dedicated themselves to mastering the details. These are some of the questions we asked them when trying to make our own determination – were they really prevailing wage experts (or Davis-Bacon experts), or were they  just people who knew something about prevailing wage.

We ask a lot of questions around forms and filings. To be a prevailing wage expert, we believe they must know what forms are required in order to comply with the various state and federal regulations. That includes being able to provide advice and/or guidance on Davis-Bacon filings; and, perhaps more importantly, on the myriad of state prevailing wage filings. If your prevailing wage expert can tell you the forms that you’ll need to file with the correct entity – and how to accurately fill them out (and file them) – that is a good sign that they are prevailing wage experts!

We also spend a lot of time asking them about their “bona fides”… To earn the title of Davis-Bacon and/or Prevailing Wage experts, we feel they must know how to review a prevailing wage employee benefit plan in order to determine whether it meets the criteria for “bona-fide” benefits for prevailing wage purposes. Specifically, there are a number of statutes and regulations that must be reviewed to make this compliance determination that extend far beyond just the basic federal and/or state prevailing wage laws in place.  Knowing what those statues and regulations are and how to find them is most definitely a critical competency that every prevailing wage expert should have!

OK, that’s enough for one post. We ask a lot more questions –  too many for one post – so we’ll have to save them for another day. In the meantime, are there questions you like to ask when making a prevailing wage expert determination – let us know!