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A RocketLevel guide for restoration owners, office managers, and anyone pricing government or institutional work, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 7-minute read.
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Reviewed October 2026. Wage rules, bond thresholds and deadlines change, and state prevailing-wage and Little Miller Act rules vary. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with the contracting authority or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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Government and institutional commercial work can be steady and high-value, and its budgets run on a different cycle from insurance work. Think schools, municipal buildings, and federal facilities. Get the payroll and payment rules below wrong and you lose the margin, or get barred from public work entirely.
On federally funded projects, the Davis-Bacon Act requires you to pay laborers and mechanics the local "prevailing wage" (a set hourly rate plus fringe benefits) for their trade. The trigger is low enough that it catches restoration work nobody thinks of as a public job. The statute reaches every covered contract in excess of $2,000 (40 U.S.C. 3142), and it requires the wage to be paid unconditionally and at least weekly, with the wage scale posted at the site. State and local public work runs on its own prevailing-wage law where the state has one, with its own thresholds and rules. Ask the contracting authority for the wage determination that applies to your scope, in writing, before you price the labor. Where rates are published they are not negotiable. If you bid public work at your normal labor cost and then discover prevailing wage applies, the difference comes straight out of your margin.
On prevailing-wage jobs you must submit certified payroll on the federal WH-347 form or a state equivalent. Weekly is the rule. 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3) requires a certified payroll every week in which any covered work is performed, and it puts the prime contractor on the hook for its subcontractors' submissions too, which is why a prime will hold your money over a payroll that is late by your standards and on time by nobody else's. It documents every worker, their classification, hours, and the wage and fringe paid, signed with a statement of compliance, and willfully falsifying it can bring civil or criminal prosecution. Getting it wrong, or late, can mean withheld payment and, for repeated or willful violations, debarment from future public work. Have the payroll process running before you bid.
Separate from prevailing wage, some buildings and metro areas operate under union labor agreements. Sending an open-shop crew in to do demolition, run temporary power, or perform other covered work can trigger a work stoppage, and you can lose the job. Ask during the pre-loss walk or at intake whether the facility has any union labor agreement or prevailing-wage requirement. If it does, plan to subcontract the affected scope to approved local union labor and act as the project manager, so the work proceeds without a stoppage and you keep the account.
On federal construction projects the prime contractor must post a payment bond under the Miller Act. The statute sets the trigger at contracts of more than $100,000 (40 U.S.C. 3131(b)). The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) sits at a different number, so do not treat the two as one figure: FAR 28.102-1 requires performance and payment bonds on a construction contract exceeding $150,000, and between $35,000 and $150,000 the contracting officer instead selects two or more alternative payment protections, which may be a payment bond, an irrevocable letter of credit, a tripartite escrow, or a certificate of deposit. Ask the contracting officer which one your contract carries, because the thing you would make a claim against is not the same document in each case. That bond is the protection the statute sets up: under the Miller Act, an unpaid subcontractor's remedy on federal work is a claim against the payment bond rather than a lien (40 U.S.C. 3133). State and local projects run on the state's own bond statute, commonly called a Little Miller Act. Each state's version sets its own thresholds and deadlines, so pull the statute for the public body that owns your project.
Two federal deadlines control your bond claim, and nobody sends you a reminder. Check your tier first, because the first one may not apply to you at all.
| Deadline | Who owes it | What the rule says |
|---|---|---|
| The 90-day notice | Only you if you have no direct contract with the prime | A first-tier subcontractor holding the prime's own contract owes none. If you are below that line, you must give the prime written notice within 90 days of the day you last performed labor or last supplied material, stating the amount claimed and the party you furnished it to (40 U.S.C. 3133(b)(2)). |
| The one-year suit limit | Everyone | Suit on the bond must be brought no later than one year after that same last-labor or last-material date (40 U.S.C. 3133(b)(4)). |
Both clocks run off your own last day on the job, not off your invoice date and not off the day the account went quiet, so calendar them the week you demobilize. Miss the 90-day notice and the claim is gone even though the year has not run.
State Little Miller Act windows are their own and are not copies of the federal ones, so look up the statute for the public body that owns the project before you rely on the federal dates.
Which page owns which number, so you know where to look next time. The dollar figures above answer whether a rule reaches your job at all, and that is a question you settle at bid time, so 04 Paperwork and the climb carries the thresholds where a bid actually gets priced. The two deadlines answer when you have to act, and a missed one is permanent, so The Per-Job Lien and Notice Calendar is the single copy of those in this library. This page keeps the full treatment of both because the mechanism only makes sense read together. When you are setting real dates on a live job, set them on the calendar.