Site of the work: which hours are covered and which are not

The Davis-Bacon clause requires prevailing wages for "all laborers and mechanics employed or working upon the site of the work." A worker who is off the site of the work is not owed the prevailing rate for those hours and does not appear on the certified payroll for them, even if the work is for the project. So the definition of the site decides what you report.

The regulation, 29 CFR 5.2, defines the site in 3 parts.

1. The primary construction site

The physical place or places where the building or work called for in the contract will remain. The building footprint, the roadway, the pipeline trench, the treatment plant. Every hour a laborer or mechanic spends there is covered.

2. Secondary construction sites

Since October 2023 the definition includes any other site where "a significant portion of the building or work is constructed, provided that such construction is for specific use in that building or work and does not simply reflect the manufacture or construction of a product made available to the general public," and provided the site is "either established specifically for the performance of the contract or project, or dedicated exclusively, or nearly so, to the performance of the contract or project for a specific period of time."

Two tests, both required. The work done there has to be a significant portion of the building or work, meaning entire portions or modules of it rather than materials or prefabricated components that will be assembled into it. And the site has to be set up for, or dedicated to, this project.

A yard rented for 8 months to assemble the modular units for one housing project is a secondary site; the workers assembling modules are covered. A precast plant that makes panels for many customers and happens to have this project's panels on its schedule is not, even if this project is most of its work this quarter.

3. Adjacent dedicated support sites

Job headquarters, tool yards, batch plants, borrow pits, and similar facilities are part of the site if they are dedicated exclusively, or nearly so, to the contract and are adjacent or virtually adjacent to the primary or a secondary site. A batch plant set up across the road for this job is on the site. A batch plant 20 miles away that serves this job and 3 others is not.

What is excluded

The regulation excludes:

• permanent home offices, branch plant establishments, fabrication plants, and tool yards of a contractor or subcontractor whose location and continuance are determined without regard to a particular contract or project
• fabrication plants, batch plants, borrow pits, job headquarters, tool yards, and similar facilities of a commercial or material supplier that were established before opening of bids and are not on the primary or secondary site, even if dedicated exclusively to the project for a time

Your shop, where you have built for 15 years and cut steel for whatever job is running, is not the site of any project. Hours there are not on the certified payroll.

Travel between sites

Time spent transporting materials or people between a site of the work and a location that is not part of the site is not covered. A worker who drives from the shop to the job is not on the clock for Davis-Bacon purposes until arriving. Time spent transporting between 2 parts of the site, for example between the batch plant across the road and the pour, is covered.

Truck drivers are the contested case. The 2023 rule provided that a driver's time on the site, unloading and waiting, is covered when it is more than de minimis; a federal court enjoined that provision in June 2024 and vacated it by final judgment in June 2026, so the older, narrower treatment applies. If drivers spend real time on your site, ask the contracting agency how it wants those hours treated. The 2023 rule and the injunction.

Mixed weeks on the payroll

A worker who spends Monday and Tuesday in the shop and Wednesday through Friday on the site is on the certified payroll for 3 days. The daily hours columns show the site days, the shop days are blank, and the gross for the project (column 7A) reflects only site hours, while gross for all work (column 7B) reflects the full check. The worker's off-site pay does not have to meet the prevailing rate, but the weekly overtime calculation still counts all 40 hours in the workweek. Overtime across covered and uncovered hours.

What to keep

Because the definition turns on facts about locations, keep the facts: where the yard is, when it was set up, what share of its output went to the project, and daily time records showing where each worker was. If an investigator questions whether your staging yard was a dedicated support site, a lease dated after award and a log of what moved through it settle it in a few minutes.

Common misreadings

"Off-site prefab is never covered." It was mostly true before 2023 and is not true now. Prefabrication of significant portions at a site established for the project is covered.

"Any yard we use for the job is covered." No. A yard that predates the job and serves other work is excluded, unless it is adjacent to the site and nearly dedicated to it.

"Drive time to the site is covered." No. Transport to and from a location that is not part of the site is outside the clause, with the truck driver question noted above.