As Recovery Act spending ramps up and stimulus money starts
to hit the streets, trade contractors eyeing the billions of
dollars allocated for low-income home weatherization and
state-backed building energy-efficiency loan programs have been
running into an unfamiliar roadblock: the Davis-Bacon Act of
1931, passed decades ago during the Great Depression.
Davis-Bacon requires contractors on federal projects to pay
local “prevailing wage” rates for all trade work on
site. Under the Recovery Act, contractors on any
stimulus-funded job are subject to the same requirement.
Davis-Bacon applies not just to low-income weatherization, but
to any project that receives even partial assistance from
federal dollars allocated in Division A of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the spending portion of
the bill. Division B, the tax portion, isn’t included, so
tax-credit–eligible work on private homes is not
affected. But all the hundreds of billions of dollars of
federal spending in the law — plus any state and local
spending or lending that the federal dollars get mixed into
— now fall under Davis-Bacon rules.
Davis-Bacon is a familiar issue for big public-works
contractors accustomed to federal bridge or road projects. But
for small remodeling or trade contractors who are otherwise
well-equipped for weatherization and energy upgrade work,
Davis-Bacon — and all the other paperwork that comes with
any public-sector job — can pose a baffling new
challenge.
Kansas City–area contractor Rick Westmoreland became
familiar with Davis-Bacon when he did weatherization and
public-housing rehab work in the 1980s. Now, with new
construction dead in his market, he’s back in the
weatherization business and gearing up to do public jobs
— and to pay Davis-Bacon wage and benefit scale.
Westmoreland says that the wage rates themselves aren’t
the big problem; he points out that everyone bidding against
you has to pay the same rates. What’s tricky is handling
the matter with employees. “Go to a market-rate project
the next day, and tell your people, ‘Now you’re
going back to where you were’ — it has a tremendous
psyche effect on the workforce. You almost have to outsource to
an entirely different workforce so that you don’t corrupt
your own.” In the current market, though, Westmoreland
expects to have enough Recovery Act–funded work that he
won’t need to send his workforce on to lower-paid
private-sector jobs.
Trade classifications are another sticking point.
Weatherization is not like building a courthouse or an office
building, where trades like mason, steelworker, and carpenter
are clearly defined. Weatherization workers tend to be more
like all-purpose handymen, says Westmoreland: “Maybe
you’re replacing broken glass in a window. Well, that
would technically be under the ‘glazing’
classification. Then you’re over here patching a hole in
the drywall. Now you’re a plasterer. You weatherstrip a
door, now you’re in the carpenter classification. So how
do you report that? How do you track that?”
To address this problem, the Department of Labor is surveying
weatherization programs across the country to find out what a
weatherization worker — a new category — typically
gets paid. When the data comes back, the DOL plans to release
new prevailing-wage scales for all counties for this type of
work. There’s also talk of creating an apprentice
category, to cover the many new weatherization trainees that
the government hopes to bring into the industry. In the
meantime, the government’s instruction to local
nonprofits and contractors is to use their current wage scales
to compensate their labor. If the new wage rates turn out to be
higher, agencies are supposed to release further money so that
contractors can pay back wages accordingly.
Under Davis-Bacon, contractors must pay weekly and file a
weekly wage report breaking out the hours worked under the
different trades, and the wages and benefits paid each worker.
For basic compliance rules, go to
dol.gov/compliance/guide/dbra.htm.
To find prevailing wage rates in your state and county,
there’s a quick lookup utility at
access.gpo.gov/davisbacon/allstates.html.
And for specific information on Davis-Bacon in low-income
weatherization programs, go to
apps1.eere.energy.gov/weatherization/.
— Ted Cushman
Offcuts
California builders now have until next year to comply with
the latest version of Title 24, the state energy code. The 2008
edition was scheduled to take effect on August 1, but delays in
completing the public-domain compliance software prompted the
California Energy Commission to move the effective date to
January 1, 2010. Included in the new code are upgraded SHGC and
U-factor window values, prescriptive cool-roof requirements,
new rules for lighting and controls, and new requirements for
mechanical ventilation and air conditioning systems.
In Minnesota, new and replacement windows installed above the
first story in most multi-unit dwellings will have to comply
with a new window safety law, which took effect July 1.
Laela’s Law — named for a Minneapolis girl injured
in a fall from a window in 2006 — calls for apartment
houses, condos, hotels, and motels to equip windows that have
sills lower than 24 inches from the floor with approved
fall-prevention screens, guards, or devices. According to the
state’s health department, falls from windows account for
12 deaths and 4,000 injuries every year nationwide among
children aged 10 and under.
Tall Condo Survives Fake
Quake
Shaking a building until it starts to fall apart is one way to
find out how strong it is — as earthquakes have shown
time after time, often with devastating consequences. In 1994,
for example, California’s Northridge earthquake shook the
San Fernando Valley, killing dozens and causing more than $25
billion in damage. But a safer and less expensive way to
perform seismic testing is to place the building on a shake
table. There are several shake tables throughout the world, but
none are larger than Japan’s E-Defense facility in Miki
City, located near Kobe, Japan. Here, a team of researchers
from five American universities working under a National
Science Foundation grant recently built a seven-story,
17,000-square-foot wood-framed condo tower and subjected it to
a series of simulated earthquakes.
The tests were the final step in a four-year investigation
into the ability of midrise wood-framed buildings to withstand
major earthquakes. Currently, building codes in the United
States allow wood-frame buildings to reach five floors in
height, but that is rarely permitted in seismic zones.
The 23-unit tower tested in Japan was built using the same
I-joists, LVLs, metal connectors, and hold-downs found on a
typical low-rise residential project. Additional structural
reinforcement came from steel special moment frames on the
ground level and mid-ply shear walls (where the sheathing is
sandwiched between a double-studded wall) in portions of the
interior shear walls.
To find out whether tall wood-framed buildings can be designed
to withstand seismic activity, researchers recently tested a
seven-floor condo tower on Japan’s E-Defense shake table
(left). The building was reinforced with an anchored tie-down
system connected to steel special moment frames on the ground
floor (middle), but otherwise was built using standard
construction materials and techniques. Large hydraulic pistons
provided the thrust to simulate a magnitude 7.5 earthquake
(right).
After the 800,000-pound building was assembled, it was moved
onto the 2.5 million-pound-capacity shake plate, which is
powered by massive hydraulic pistons. Initial testing simulated
the kind of fairly common seismic events that occur every 70
years or so, while the final 40-second test simulated a much
rarer and more powerful quake measuring 7.5 on the Richter
scale (the Northridge quake registered a 6.7). Other than some
cracked drywall, the building experienced no significant
structural damage, says Colorado State University civil
engineering professor John van de Lindt, a principal
investigator on the project. “The test in Miki City
ultimately could help the building industry safely increase the
height of wood-frame construction to six — possibly even
seven — stories in active seismic zones,” he says.
— Andrew Wormer