Department of Labor and Prevailing Wages for Land Surveyors
I have been reviewing some US Department of Labor material in regard to the need for Land Surveyors to be paid prevailing wages. As I understand it the requirement for prevailing wages triggers certified payroll. Put differently, without prevailing wages there is no need for certified payroll.
From on-line Dept. of Labor material it seems that:
- People who function in an administrative/professional capacity and are salaried, and not hourly, are not covered by prevailing wages. To me this means that if a professional land surveyor does some surveying on a construction site he or she is exempt from the prevailing wages and certified payroll requirements under federal labor law, assuming a normal contract for the work.
- For Land Surveying to be considered prevailing wages/certified payroll work the surveying needs to be done as a part of the actual construction effort, such as construction staking, as-builts, construction certification, etc. Preliminary boundary, topographic work intended to produce a ??base map?? for further design effort by others (e.g., by engineers, architects, etc.) is not prevailing wages/certified payroll work.
If anyone wants I can provide documentation for the above. My understanding seems out of line with how prevailing wages/certified payroll work is actually administered in my state, California. So if anyone has any comments on this subject, even from a different state, I would appreciate it if they could post them.
States play a part in administering the DOL (Department of Labor) rules/laws. In California this is done through the DIR (Department of Industrial Relations), but I believe that everything ultimately goes back to DOL and Davis Bacon.
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