Recovery.gov - Track the Money

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) requires the payment of Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) prevailing wage rates to “laborers and mechanics employed by contractors and subcontractors on projects funded directly by or assisted in whole or in part by and through the Federal Government” pursuant to the Act. The Recovery Act appropriates substantial funding for construction, alteration and repair of Federal buildings, and for infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, public transit, water systems, and housing.

WHD will promote compliance with the Recovery Act’s labor standards provisions and ensure that the greatest number of workers on Recovery Act projects receive the wages and benefits to which they are entitled under the law. Increased compliance assistance and outreach is intended to minimize coverage disputes and explain compliance principles to federal, state, and local contracting agency staff who have limited experience with the program.

Davis-Bacon Wage Determination Updates
To respond to the demand for updated and current wage rates under the Recovery Act, WHD will reduce the time for conducting highway construction surveys to produce more timely and accurate highway construction wage determinations. WHD is reducing the backlog of building and heavy construction wage surveys to improve timeliness of processing new wage determinations for those industries. WHD is also taking inventory of other wage determinations to determine which are outdated and should be replaced. WHD will expend and estimated $4.688 million and 10 FTE to update prevailing wage rates based on wage survey data.

Prevailing Wage Enforcement
Under the Recovery Act, WHD expects DBA and related complaint investigations to double over the next two years – from approximately 400 to 800. Moreover, WHD believes that it is appropriate to conduct directed investigations of the Recovery Act projects to ensure compliance with applicable labor laws. The agency proposes to increase its directed investigations from the current average of 90 per year to 250 per year – approximately five per district office. As a result, WHD expects to complete over 2,000 investigations over two years beginning in FY 2010 . WHD also notes that the Recovery Act will have an impact on its Service Contract Act (SCA) enforcement program because of the volume of anticipated federal service work to be undertaken with funding from the Recovery Act.

WHD will expend approximately $17.299 million and 106 FTE to enforce applicable prevailing wage statutes on Recovery Act-funded contracts. This includes resources to conduct intensive outreach efforts to train contractors that may not have been previously covered by DBA and other Federal employment laws enforced by WHD.

Outreach
WHD’s outreach plan includes education and outreach to contractors and their associations, employees and their representatives, and local community groups, so that they are fully informed on the Davis-Bacon requirements and rights provided therein. Specific outreach activities include issuing guidance, creating a Web page for DBA and SCA labor standards, publishing a revised edition of the Prevailing Wage Resource Manual, and numerous conferences and educational events.
•Conducting at least six national conferences for all stakeholders to include: an introductory session on DBA and SCA principles, a more comprehensive prevailing wage conference, a contracting agency training session on contract requirements, wage determinations, conformances, and responsibilities for compliance under the DBA and a session devoted to outline and promote DBA wage determination program enhancements.
•Conduct additional conferences in FY2010 based on stakeholder requests and review of enforcement patterns and complaint data analysis identifying areas where systemic compliance issues by agency, geography, and/or type of construction/industry are occurring.

WHD has designated a senior executive to oversee the agency’s Recovery Act plan. WHD will report no less often than quarterly on the progress of its wage determination program updates. Internal reports will identify the status of the surveys, anticipated completion dates, and changes in the prevailing wage rates as a result of the new data. WHD will also monitor its enforcement activity by separately identifying investigations related to Recovery Act projects. WHD investigators will also indicate time spent investigating Davis-Bacon compliance with the prevailing wage provisions of the Recovery Act. WHD will monitor and track its outreach events, including the use of an approved customer satisfaction survey for monitoring the impact of the prevailing wage conferences. Finally, WHD will track its Recovery Act Web site activity. Longer term monitoring of compliance with the Davis-Bacon provisions via Davis-Bacon investigations will demonstrate whether the increased enforcement presence, the increased use of penalties such as debarment, and the increased outreach to the federal contracting community have an impact on contractors’ levels of compliance.

WHD will use similar methodologies for tracking Recovery Act-related enforcement costs as it does with its current program goals. WHD will track Recovery Act investigations in its investigation database. WHD investigators currently log their time into the agency’s case tracking database. This function will allow the agency to account for all direct enforcement hours and all outreach hours related to Recovery Act activities. All staff involved in Recovery Act activities will track time in the Department’s personnel time management system. WHD will use this system to determine the cumulative number of hours spent by WHD personnel on Recovery Act cases. The FTE costs could then be calculated using the actual compensation and benefit level of each individual charging time to Recovery Act-related work. Increased contract costs for the wage determination program can be tracked separately by associating hours worked and related costs to any surveys conducted as a result of the Recovery Act funds that would not have been otherwise conducted. WHD will use a separate accounting code for tracking travel-related activities. Recovery Act costs in both instances are a subset of the cost of current indicators.

WHD has designated an SES executive manager as responsible for the successful implementation of the Recovery Act plan. In addition, the goals and objectives of the revised enforcement and wage determination program will be integrated into WHD’s Annual Performance Plan to which all agency managers are held accountable in their standards.

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