The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) is seeking a comprehensive, effective, and robust solution to create digital maps from geographic descriptions and physical maps so the public works community can find their applicable wage rates for public works through an address search. This will be made available to all members of the public, but mainly utilized by contractors, employees and public awarding agencies. This will aid and streamline the method in which this data is made available to the regulated public and save significant staff hours for our department and the public works community.

The California Labor Code requires that, at a minimum, the prevailing wage, including travel and/or subsistence, be paid to workers employed on public works projects. Prevailing wage rates differ based on the geographic location, the occupation, and when the work was performed. Contractors can be fined if they do not pay the required rates on their project. In most cases, a prevailing wage determination covers an entire county. However, in other cases prevailing wage rates apply to only a portion of a county. These boundaries are less obvious and that is where digital maps would be helpful.

Contractors are required to comply with minimum compensation requirements applicable to their public work projects. When the applicable rate of pay for their project is not readily apparent based on a narrative description of a geographic area in the wage determination, members of the public call or write to our office and staff then consult a physical map.

There is an estimated $20-25 billion in California public works contracts annually and there are hundreds of thousands of workers, tens of thousands of contractors, and thousands of awarding bodies involved in California public works projects. On an average daily basis, our office receives about 10 requests requiring the utilization of maps. To resolve these requests, our staff:

• Refer to physical maps to ascertain the rate of pay based on the worker classification and location of a public works project.
• Communicate the applicable compensation requirements to those involved in public works (awarding bodies, employers, and employees).
• May provide less precise geographic results given the manual process absent a digital solution.
• Have to respond to a variety of individual inquiries which leads to longer wait times for these types of requests. These requests may have to wait behind other prevailing wage requests as we receive requests on a variety of prevailing wage issues.

In the current state, staff are burdened with an overload of inquiries, contractors and employees have difficulty getting necessary wage rate information, and contractors’ inability to retrieve the prevailing wage, travel and/or substance information in a timely manner could result in fines or even the loss of the ability to work on public works projects if caught underpaying their employees. Additionally, without this detail of information, employees cannot easily verify that they are being paid appropriately. This manual work by DIR staff may lead to longer wait times.

Our office would like to create digital maps in-house and provide interested parties with self-service maps on our website so anyone can identify their wage compensation requirements, instantaneously, and have access to this information at any time, as opposed to making an inquiry with our office during business hours only.

This solution will lead to the following outcomes: 

• Provide interested parties, including staff, an easier and more user-friendly way of obtaining the information they need
• Provide a better experience to those working on, monitoring, and carrying out public works in ensuring they are receiving timely and accurate information
• Promote efficiency in the execution of public works contracts
• Reduce the number of daily requests received by our office 
• Allow for staff to work on other important assignments
  Save the Department time and money 

Ultimately, DIR is seeking a solution that provides: 

• The creation of digital maps from geographic descriptions and physical maps
• Historical indexing (past wage rates by location, trade)
• Real-time wage information (up-to-date wage determinations, which are updated twice a year)
• A self-service component and map keys
• An Interactive and user-friendly interface
• Hover-over map feature display
• Capability to search utilizing multiple data filters and categories
• ADA compliance
• An easy way to print search results

Preferably, this solution will also employ: 

• Mobile-friendly browser and application
• API and integration capability

In addition to the solution described, the vendor will also be required to provide: 

• Training and training materials such as manuals and instruction booklets to applicable DIR staff 
• Implementation support
• Regular reporting on map utilization, analytics on hit rates, and category search-level data

Vendor requirements: 

• Experience developing interactive mapping solutions for government agencies; California government experience preferred