Overheated construction market delays opening of new high school in Menlo Park

I can't believe it's difficult to find good qualified workers for $100 an hour?? I'm assuming there are benefits on top of that.

What is the prevailing wage, I know an experienced contractor that will work for less.

Who should he call?

$110 an hour:

Welcome to the world of prevailing wages. Just for clarity the prevailing wage for OVERTIME is $100 per hour. That said, prevailing wage is required on public works projects. Prevailing wage is based on the current local UNION wage plus BENEFITS. The contractor then has to place his burden on top of that. Burden is the employers portion of employment taxes, i.e. social security, state disability etc.. Another burden is workers compensation. This can be quite costly depending on the trade. Then the contractor gets overhead and profit on top of that. Add all of those costs together and multiply by 1.5 and you can see how the cost goes to $100 per hour. You can thank our legislators for bending over to organized labor and making us pay more to have our public projects built.

ON another note finding good, qualified work in this area is EXTREMELY difficult. The fact is there no one just standing around waiting for a job or better pay. Everyone that is any good is already making top wages. Contractors are poaching workers from other contractors by offering higher wages, but that only goes so far. There is a shortage of skilled workers in ALL trades.

You can thank the last twenty or thirty years of "everyone has to go to college to get a good job." Never mind that its not true and by directing people that might have been better off in the trades to college where they didn't do well has created the beginnings of a shortage of skilled trades people. If things continue the way they have, in ten years we'll be paying skilled trades people $150,000 to $200,000 a year because they will be that valuable due to their scarcity.

I am a contractor. I know.

Who can my friend call for for any of these projects?

Schools?
Cities?
Public works?

Send your friend to the local union hiring halls. Does your friend actually have a trade? If not, they do take on apprentices. Money sucks for them though.

He;s a licensed general, but would probably be happy to work for $100 an hour himself

or get a contract with one of the public entities?

Who should he contact,

Thanks,

To clarify, no one is personally making $100/hour for overtime work. That is a total burdened cost to the public entity NOT what the average trades person is being paid.

If he wants to subcontract any of the plan rooms have plans on file that are currently out to bid. The closest one is in San Carlos. He won't be able to get a subcontract with any public works project that is already under contract as the GC has to name his subcontractors when he bids the job. By law (with a few exceptions) the GC is required to use those subs.

Warning to your friend. It takes a long time to get paid. You always get paid, but you're gong to be floating your payroll for a long time. Also, you will need to be bondable for the value of what you're bidding on (that costs money) and you will need to have the appropriate level of liability insurance. AND, plan on doing tons of paperwork and providing certified payroll records every month. Frankly, IMHO, public works is no place for a newbie. He'll be eaten alive.

That explains a lot,

Too much paperwork, too many regulations,

Thanks for the explanation

The article lacked a critical component - who can do the work Web Link
Understand, almost every contractor who fits the requirement will bid. It is not that they need the work, but schools have a distinction of their own. Once the project starts - it is almost a 100% guarantee that budget overruns will happen. The architectural plans will call for one thing, then as they start building, JCO's (Job Change Orders) follow. So in a typical scenario, the contractor with minorities and small business status will bid under water knowing that the JCO will then make up the gap and in fact, a large margin
If you are looking for validation to the above, just ask the Sequoia High School District (or any CA district for that matter)

Once a contract is awarded, no change orders, they are really expensive.

"Once a contract is awarded, no change orders, they are really expensive."

Great idea. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way.