The wage determination, priced for the trades you’re bidding.
A federally funded job names a wage determination, and the determination arrives as a hundred-odd lines of monospaced text covering ninety classifications you are not carrying. Give us the number, tick the classifications you are, enter your hours: out comes a dated rate basis sheet — base rate, fringe, loaded rate, hours and extended cost per line, the premium-pay footnotes printed with each classification, the ones published below the executive-order minimum that same document states, and the date to re-check it.
Build a rate basis — $49See a finished one first
$49 per project, one payment. The sample is the real thing, and it costs nothing to read — no email, no account.
From the sample sheet
VA20260195, modification 2, published August 6, 2026
A Virginia highway determination covering 13 counties. Three of its 33 classifications, priced:
ELECTRICIAN, INCLUDES TRAFFIC SIGNALIZATION
Base $36.85Fringe $14.13Loaded $50.98320 h$16,313.60
TRAFFIC CONTROL: FLAGGER
Base $12.89Fringe $0.00Loaded $12.891,200 h$15,468.00
Published below the executive-order minimum this determination states
OPERATOR: ROLLER
Base $21.32Fringe $0.00Loaded $21.32640 h$13,644.80
2,160 hours, $45,426.40 extended. Re-check by September 5, 2026.
Read the whole sheet, plus one built from a 135-classification Los Angeles determination →
What is on the sheet
What you priced, on the record
Determination number, modification number, publication date, state, construction types and every county covered — printed at the top. Six months later, when someone asks which publication the labour number came from, the sheet answers it.
One row per classification you carry
Base rate and fringe exactly as published, the loaded rate, your hours, and the extended cost. Not the other ninety classifications on the document.
The premium-pay footnotes, attached
DOL prints shift premiums, base-specific adders and scope footnotes inside the classification block. A $10/hour premium that gets stripped by a paste into a spreadsheet is real money. Here it stays on the line it belongs to.
The date to re-check
Give us the bid opening date and the sheet prints the date ten days before it — the point at which a republication starts landing on the bidder rather than the agency.
The line you would not have caught
Wage determinations state an executive-order hourly minimum in their own body text, and then list classifications underneath at rates that sit below it. On the sample, the flagger is published at $12.89 while the same document names $13.65 under Executive Order 13658. Reading the document top to bottom, those two facts are pages apart. The sheet puts them next to each other.
What it does not do is tell you what to pay. Whether an executive order reaches your contract turns on its award date and renewal history — facts the determination does not carry and we do not have. The sheet states what the document says and flags what you need to confirm with your contracting officer.
Where the numbers come from
Literal values, not estimates
Every rate on the sheet is a value published on the determination named at the top. The only figures we work out are base plus fringe, loaded rate times your hours, and the column totals — and each of those is re-derived from the source document before the sheet is allowed to render.
Reproducible by hand
Every sheet links to the same determination on SAM.gov, at the modification it was priced against. Open it and check any line. That is the point of a basis document.
Nothing quietly dropped
If any part of the published document cannot be read cleanly, we refuse to build the sheet rather than hand you a short list. A classification that never reaches you never reaches your bid.
When it gets republished
DOL republishes determinations under new modification numbers, and a new modification does not necessarily move any rate you priced. The two revisions of VA20260195 we pulled are a fair example: between modification 0 and 1 the department re-cased every classification name and added one classification, moving no rate; between 1 and 2 nothing changed on a priced line at all.
We do not claim to know how often that goes the other way — we have not measured it, so we will not tell you. What we can say is that today the only way to find out whether a republication touched your bid is to read the new document against the old one. Your sheet names the modification you priced and the date to re-check, so that comparison starts from a fixed point rather than from memory.
Looking up a rate, not building a bid?
Published rates by state, county and construction type are free to read here, with the determination number, modification number and publication date on every page.
Questions estimators ask
Which determination applies to my job?
The bid documents name it — usually a number like VA20260195, and usually a construction type with it. When they name only the project, search by the county the work is in on the start page and pick from the active determinations that cover it. Which one governs your contract is a question for the contracting officer, not for us.
What is a modification number?
The same determination is republished over time, each time under a higher modification number and a new publication date. Your sheet records the one you priced against, so a later republication is a comparison rather than an argument.
The classification I need is not on the determination.
A classification that is not printed on the determination is not priced by it. The published route for adding one is a conformance request to the contracting officer, not an estimate. We will not invent a rate for work the document does not price.
Does this cover state prevailing-wage programmes?
No. This page covers federal Davis-Bacon general wage determinations only. State prevailing-wage programmes and Service Contract Act determinations are published separately and are not included here.
Is this legal or compliance advice?
No. Which determination, construction type, and classification apply to a particular contract depends on facts specific to that contract. This page states what the published determination says; confirm applicability with your contracting officer.
What if something goes wrong with my order?
If the published determination cannot be read in full, or the check that re-derives every figure from it fails, nothing is delivered and the charge is reversed without you asking. If a sheet was delivered and our access log shows you never opened it, you can have the money back within 30 days. The full clause is in the terms.
What is not on the sheet?
Burden, markup, overtime, shift differentials you owe under your own agreements, and the premium pay described in the footnotes — those are yours to add. The sheet carries the published rates and the arithmetic over them, nothing further.
This page covers federal Davis-Bacon general wage determinations only. State prevailing-wage programmes and Service Contract Act determinations are published separately and are not included here.
Which determination, construction type, and classification apply to a particular contract depends on facts specific to that contract. This page states what the published determination says; confirm applicability with your contracting officer.
The Department of Labor republishes determinations under new modification numbers. This page shows the modification named above; check the source before relying on these rates in a bid.