At SkillSmart, we know that your data is an asset that can develop trust and confidence.  Data that is easily captured on a daily basis and formally structured is vital to making business decisions while bringing transparency to each project and helping present the positive impact it is having.

As we have shared throughout 2022 in our blog posts, our technology platform offers companies, communities, and project teams a level of data accuracy and transparency while encouraging collaboration and the ability to show positive economic impact throughout all aspects of a project.

Here are the series that have been the most popular topics throughout the past year. These posts have not only educated many different sectors on how the correct collection of data can benefit all organizations working towards a common goal but the data, collected through the SkillSmart platform, has brought forth exciting revelations for companies in education, capital infrastructure, local and state governments, construction, airports, mixed-use development, healthcare and others.

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)

https://www.skillsmart.us/7-things-to-know-about-iija/

Top Questions to Ask When Researching Construction Technology

https://www.skillsmart.us/top-8-questions-to-ask-when-you-are-looking-for-certified-payroll-reporting-software/

https://www.skillsmart.us/top-8-questions-to-ask-when-you-are-researching-dei-tracking-and-labor-compliance-software/

https://www.skillsmart.us/top-9-questions-to-ask-when-you-are-a-project-manager-researching-construction-data-tracking-software/

Industry Focus: Wage Theft

https://www.skillsmart.us/is-wage-theft-more-prevalent-in-the-construction-industry/

https://www.skillsmart.us/wage-theft-what-to-look-for-and-what-to-do-when-you-see-something/

2022 Client and Project Spotlights:

https://www.skillsmart.us/amplifying-construction-dei-strategies-using-technology/

https://www.skillsmart.us/skillsmart-and-dragados-usa-ohl-usa-to-partner-on-marylands-purple-line-project/

In September, SkillSmart launched a monthly blog post that places a spotlight on topics that demonstrate how working together and using the right technology organizations can make people, communities, and businesses stronger. The last four months of 2022 brought these thought-provoking posts:

The InSight Minute

https://www.skillsmart.us/the-insight-minute-labor-day-reflections/

https://www.skillsmart.us/the-insight-minute-wage-theft/

https://www.skillsmart.us/the-insight-minute-strengthening-communities-by-making-a-bigger-pie/

https://www.skillsmart.us/the-insight-minute-data-insights-action/

Have a question or want to set up a demo to see how our software is working to provide data, insights, and action for companies across the country?

Find out more here: https://www.skillsmart.us/insight-demo/

Power Construction’s implementation of SkillSmart’s InSight technology on more than two dozen projects has allowed them to track workforce and business data and provides a clear view of how and where Power is able to make the biggest impact in the community.

Power Construction, a Chicago-based general contractor, began using SkillSmart InSight in 2019.

“We loved how SkillSmart works. Their team is flexible and open to new ideas, much more than any other company we had talked to,” said Sean Glowacz, Diversity & Inclusion Manager for Power Construction explained. “They wanted to work with the Power team to make a tool that was useful for more than an individual project. Their goal was to implement it across the entire organization.”

Site tour at the Terminal 5 Expansion and Renovation at O’Hare Airport. Hosted by Power Construction for Revolution Workshop students in Chicago, IL. Power offers site-tours through their partnerships with pre-apprentice organizations. These programs are focused on preparing local, minority, and female candidates for careers in construction trades. Photo Credit: Power Construction

InSight is deployed on more than two dozen Power projects, ranging in size from $2 million to $500 million. The technology allows Power to manage project reporting in a centralized portal, with the ability to:

• Track all contract awards made on Power projects – including sub-tier awards made by prime contractors – and track payments to those contractors
• Track contract awards and payments made to certified contractors (the system can track any certification of interest to our clients)
• Track workforce hours performed on Power projects, including associated demographic and geographic details
• Generate reports summarizing contract and workforce achievements for individual projects and across all active jobs
• Track Power’s community outreach efforts

Power Construction hosts Chicago Women in Trades students at their Shops at Big Deahl project site. This retail and residential development is located in the Goose Island neighborhood in Chicago, IL. Photo Credit: Power Construction

Using InSight, Power can view data in real-time on a day-to-day basis to learn more about workforce on specific project sites. Examples of data collected include subcontractor and vendor location, demographics, and financial resources.

One unexpected observation that InSight has provided Power is the ability to identify sub-tier subcontractors that they had not previously been aware of. With this knowledge, Power has invited some to participate in their subcontractor onboarding program, giving subcontractors the potential opportunity to bid Power as a prime contractor.

Unlike traditional tracking strategies utilizing payroll data and spreadsheets, InSight produces dynamic reporting metrics that inform Power of successes, shortcomings, and most importantly, where they make the biggest economic impact. SkillSmart was also able to integrate with two of Power’s software providers—CMiC and Ceridian—to assist in accurate data transfer without needing to reenter data.

Data generated by InSight provides Power additional valuable information regarding building subcontractor project teams for upcoming projects.

“When subcontractors make a commitment, Power can see there are actions behind it that are quantifiable,” Glowacz said. “Our team knows the kind of contracts they’ve let, the specifics of those contracts and the workforce being brought to the table.” Often, the most powerful partnerships occur between a subcontractor that is not minority certified but brings sub-tier participation with a diversified workforce to the project, giving Power more confidence that the subcontractor understands the purpose behind the DEI efforts.

Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse students joined Power Construction for a site tour of District 1860. Photo Credit: Power Construction

Power Construction plans to implement InSight on more projects throughout 2022, as well as utilize another SkillSmart technology, Seeker, to amplify the hiring efforts of their subcontractor partners.

To learn more about SkillSmart’s InSight technology for the construction industry, please visit: https://www.skillsmart.us/insight-demo/.

SkillSmart was selected by the new design-build consortium for Maryland’s Purple Line project. This project will require thousands of workers across 100+ subcontractors and their tiers. As part of the project, all companies must comply and demonstrate compliance with the established wage rates for each trade and County. The Purple Line will use SkillSmart’s InSight technology to engage all of the subcontractors and their tiered subs, tracking all required reporting data and enabling real-time reporting.

SkillSmart was enlisted at the start of the Purple Line project in 2019, so the project team could take advantage of the software’s powerful features. These features, outlined below, are the same elements that will be used to track the construction data for this project.

Submit and track monthly payroll. Contractors and tiered subcontractors use SkillSmart InSight to enter and gather the data they need to ensure project requirements are met.

• Enter weekly payroll hours
• Track monthly man hours
• Track workplace incidents
• Upload signed payroll forms and daily reports
• Track employees (including demographics, nationally targeted worker status, and social/economic disadvantaged status)
• Generate monthly utilization and EEO reports

Centralized reporting. The team will be able to have this data at their fingertips in one, simplified dashboard.

• Manage subcontractor accounts and permissions
• Call up submitted payroll forms
• Generate and track monthly utilization and EEO reports
• Streamline compliance reporting

This 16-mile, $9.3B, light rail project is estimated to be completed in 2026. To read more about the Purple Line project, click here: https://www.purplelinemd.com/about-the-project/overview

Our team took the opportunity to highlight nearly all of the areas that the construction industry either should be focused on or are already getting a head-start on elevating these areas within their organizations and how SkillSmart’s technology platform, InSight, can help your firm with all of it.

Correctly Submitted WH 347’s – What Data is Needed?

And Here’s How SkillSmart Can Help Your Firm Collect It.

Incorrectly reporting certified payroll leads to serious consequences from the IRS. But many companies completing a WH347 form are misidentifying staff without even knowing it.

Because of confusion identifying W2 employees versus 1099 independent contractors, some companies are mistakenly submitting incorrect information – opening them up to fees and other serious consequences – often because the data with their organization’s system is not being collected or organized correctly.

W2 Employee vs 1099 Contractor

Let’s look at the difference between a W2 employee and a 1099 contractor, as classified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Most employees in the U.S. work for a single company full or part-time and are what is known as a W2 worker or contracted employee. They get the security of consistent employment (even if it is temporary) and access to the equipment and training necessary to perform the job, but the company gets to dictate almost all the remaining terms of the arrangement, including when, where, and how the work is accomplished. As a result, these employees are given a W2 tax form at the end of each year. The employer has to pay employer taxes and withholds the employee taxes and remits to the government on behalf of the worker. Employees also get certain protections that we’ll discuss in the next section.

If you’ve ever wondered what a 1099 position means, it’s simply the classification of a worker as an independent contractor instead of an employee. An independent contractor operates as an unincorporated, individually owned business, and in many ways, these workers can be viewed as the opposite of a W2 employee. They are responsible for paying their own taxes, both at filing time and quarterly throughout the year, and holding a 1099 position means they aren’t entitled to receive any of the traditional benefits that accompany full-time employment, such as retirement plans and health insurance. There are many different types of independent contractors, but a few examples include independent owner/operators for trucking, drywall finishers, painters, flooring installers and many finish trades where manpower is at a premium.

The classification of workers is one that organizations are legally required to report to the IRS, but one that can trip up companies, based on the data they have gathered for the year.

Reporting Classifications on the WH347

The deductions recorded on the WH347 form include FICA, federal with-holding tax, state with-holding tax, medicare – all of which are not deductions for 1099 contractors.

The payroll form is also required to be signed on the last page stating the organization is correctly reporting their employees and hours paid for the last 12 months. On this final page is the area where organizations can provide an explanation for areas that were checked “other” or not filled in. This is where organizations often clarify that there are “1099 workers” listed on the form.

And this is where SkillSmart can help.

SkillSmart InSight is the ONLY comprehensive construction solution for labor and business compliance tracking. Manage one or many projects through a centralized, secure portal. Track your hours, payroll, contractor wages rates, construction data, MBE participation, supplier tracking and more. InSight is also the only software on the market that offers organizations the ability to track both W2 and 1099 contractor data, collectively or broken out, for name, address, hours worked, gender, and ethnicity.

What does this mean for your Workforce Inclusion Reporting?

For the administrators collecting the data, needed to submit a WH 347 so your organization can be paid, eliminating duplicate data entry and ensuring the right data is aggregated is invaluable. Utilizing InSight, organizations have one entry point for both W2 data, collected through payroll, and 1099 data, submitted by subcontractors. By having two collection areas within the system, InSight can automatically generate the WH 347 for your team, as well as the 1099 report to accompany that, in turn giving the government entities all the information they need, in a legal and precise format.

With this accurate and aggregated data, your firm can confidently sign and submit the required forms for payment without the consequence of your business being prosecuted for falsification of documents or wrongful reporting.

The data collected goes beyond the benefits of the correct submission of WH347 forms. InSight provides organizations the ability to create custom reports for review, analysis, and QA/QC for your team. Our team works hand in hand with your in-house experts to identify which reports will be helpful and when. For some, monthly or quarterly reports on hours worked and project status, for others, weekly reporting on payroll to proactively identify non-compliance on wage rates.

SkillSmart can help you achieve all of this.

For more information on SkillSmart or to set up a demo with our team, click here.

The $1.2T infrastructure bill marks one of the most significant investments in the country’s infrastructure since Congress responded to the Great Recession.

The bill, signed into law on Monday, November 15, will send billions of dollars to states and local jurisdictions, over the next five years. More than $110 billion will be directed to replace and repair roads, bridges, and highways, and $66 billion to boost rail, making it the most substantial such investment in the country’s passenger and commercial network since the creation of Amtrak. In addition, lawmakers provided $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply and replace lead pipes, $60 billion to modernize the power grid and expand broadband and other public works projects.

This means the biggest impacts of this bill will be felt by those in the construction industry and the communities where the resources will be spent.  Some reports are estimating that this could create 1 million jobs over the course of five years.

Clearly, this is an incredible opportunity for those contractors who typically bid on projects with public-funding, and given the scale, this represents a new market for those firms who haven’t.  So, what does that mean for the industry’s that will be charged with putting this money to work?

Here’s What We Know

The ability to demonstrate the economic impact of this funding and the specific individual projects is going to be paramount for both the funders and the contractors.  There is a continuation of the existing disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) program to address race and gender discrimination in surface transportation related business.  Funded projects must have at least  10 percent of the work provided to small business concerns owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.  Additionally, there are requirements to ensure prompt payments to DBE contractors.  Finally, projects receiving any funds must ensure they are paying prevailing wages to those workers on the project.

To ensure that the funds are both building the infrastructure, as well as having the desired economic impact across the country, it will be important for projects to capture information about business participation, labor demographics, and prevailing wages in order to demonstrate these positive benefits.

Three Things to Consider (and how SkillSmart can Help)

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. The key to ensuring full access to the benefits of this bill is data tracking and reporting. This shouldn’t sound new, as it is a refrain that projects owners, both public and private, have been saying for some time, but the demands of the Infrastructure Bill are absolutely amplifying the importance of data collection, monitoring, and reporting to ensure equitable and inclusive projects.

This is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. Here are three things to consider before this funding starts flowing into your project pursuit pipeline:

1. The requirements outlined in the law can be straightforward and inexpensive to track so don’t let it keep your company from bidding on this new work.
2. It’s a simple and straightforward process to track, manage and report on the key elements contained within the law and meet any reporting requirements that may arise.
3. The ability to proactively demonstrate the economic benefits of a project can provide you a competitive advantage when bidding on new work.

SkillSmart will be digging into this bill over the next few months, providing a deeper dive into:

• Specific construction sectors where funding is being allocated.
• Where our team is currently supporting contractors and owners on projects like the ones anticipated within the infrastructure bill.
• How technology will play a key role in executing these projects into the future.

If you are interested in discussing any of the information above or how SkillSmart can support your team with tracking, managing, and reporting your project data, please contact Joshua Lowery (jlowery@skillsmart.us).

The state of New York is on the cusp of being the sixth state, joining California, Nevada, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia, to put a wage theft law into effect exposing General Contractors and subcontractors to significantly greater lability than before. The General Contractor Liability for Unpaid Wages Act (NY Senate Bill 2766), passed by New York State Senate and State Assembly in early June, shifts liability to GCs for wage theft cases on private construction projects.

What does this mean?

General Contractors are directly liable for unpaid wages owed to a worker by any subcontractor on any level of the project. The General Contractor could be liable for up to three years after a project has been completed, even if the wage theft was conducted by a subcontractor tiers down, unbeknownst to the GC. However, the General Contractor, under NY Senate Bill 2766, “may withhold payment to a subcontractor or lower-tier subcontractor for failure to provide certain payroll records.”

One potential consequence of this law could be the delay of payments by the General Contractors to subcontractors to allow time to confirm appropriate wage payments. Thus, it will be in the subcontractors’ best interest to be able to affirm appropriate wage payment in order to ensure timely payment of its award amount.

How can we help?

SkillSmart understands the intricacies of tracking data, as well as how to report on it efficiently. That’s why we’re the only solution that provides complete visibility throughout all of your project tiers. Not only that, Insight offers proactive notifications on potential wage rate issues, missing data, and more.
Utilized by owners and General Contractors across the country, SkillSmart InSight allows all project tiers to enter their employee and payroll information to ensure accurate notification of wage data. Utilizing a proactive notifications system and reporting on the underlying data and potential non-compliance. InSight provides unmatched visibility down the project tier – allowing identifications of issues in real-time for every subcontractor on the job.
InSight can be accessed from anywhere – job site, office, on the road, and is a secure location to store company, employee, contract, and business data, for one or multiple projects. InSight is the only comprehensive construction solution for labor, MWDBE participation, and business compliance tracking. Whether your projects have state, federal, local, or internal goals that your organization is committed to achieving, InSight gives you the real-time data to ensure your project meets every requirement.
General Contractors that could be liable under the New York law should deploy InSight, as it will give real-time confirmation that each subcontractor, at any tier, is paying the appropriate wage for salaried and 1099 workers. Without a tool like this, a GC will be forced to withhold subcontractor payment and take on the expense of retaining records, for up to three years, if an employee at any tier would bring a claim for unpaid wages.
To learn more about how InSight can help you simplify your project team’s compliance efforts and track goals to meet every owner’s expectations, request a personalized demo today.

Beginning today, SkillSmart’s Insight construction compliance tracking and reporting platform will integrate BIM 360^®, a construction management software part of Autodesk Construction Cloud™.

This seamless integration enables joint customers to stay informed about on-site construction progress and make critical project management decisions with real-time data, including diversity and inclusion data points. With the simple addition of a Partner Card to BIM 360’s Project Home dashboard, customers can view InSight’s regularly updated workforce, vendor, and key performance metric data directly on their project management home-base.

InSight’s best-in-class collection, monitoring and reporting technology empowers users to collect critical data – such as labor hours, payroll, diverse and local workforce utilization, contractor wages rates, MBE participation, and supplier tracking – and track the insights and stories needed to remain competitive. By adding the SkillSmart InSight Partner Card to BIM 360, project teams can reduce their administrative work, improve project management decision making, and enhance communication with their clients and stakeholders.

“We are excited to partner with Autodesk Construction Cloud to address one of the most significant challenges facing the construction and infrastructure industry today,” said Jason Green, Co-Founder of SkillSmart. “We believe for the industry to remain relevant and grow, it must demonstrate its impact on local communities. This integration allows joint customers to receive key real-time data on critical metrics to meet specific compliance requirements, and also to set goals, measure progress and demonstrate the economic impact of projects.”

“Construction teams today collect a wealth of data in their digital solutions,” said James Cook, head of integrations at Autodesk Construction Solutions. “By leveraging that data to make informed decisions, teams can yield significantly more productivity. With the addition of the InSight Partner Card, our customers can monitor SkillSmart’s compliance & reporting information alongside the critical building data in BIM 360 for a holistic view of their projects.”

Customers can simply add the SkillSmart Partner Card to their BIM 360 Project Home dashboard by following these steps.

SkillSmart, with its comprehensive solution, is helping project owners, developers, and general contractors across the country collect, monitor, and report data in a new way to move beyond just compliance.  Businesses and the people who employ them are the cornerstones of healthy communities. Skillsmart’s InSight platform is the new platform for compliance tracking of subcontractors, data reports to local governments, and employee tracking during construction projects to ensure local and diverse resources participate in economic development.

Congress and President Trump have approved a $2.2 trillion stimulus package which is nearly half the spending of our entire annual federal budget. Amazingly, this will just be the beginning of stimulus spending.  The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, recently stated “This isn’t even a stimulus package,” he said. “It is emergency relief. Emergency relief. That’s what this is.”

Given the focus on infrastructure over the last few years, it appears that any stimulus package will include the infrastructure industry and its propensity for shovel ready projects that can start immediately. To be clear, these sorts of large stimulus packages are a good thing in response to our current economic state; they are necessary but not sufficient.

As policy makers debate the appropriate policy levers to exercise and the amounts those levers will make available to states and communities, they must remember that how stimulus funds are distributed and how those funds are tracked while the projects are ongoing will influence the desired economic impact.

Too often, the economic benefits promised by stimulus spending do not actually accrue to the impacted communities or their residents.  Stimulus legislation must require funds be disseminated through a transparent process with participation goals for local and diverse vendors and residents to achieve equitable distribution of stimulus funds and the desired community impact.

The impact of development is generally measured by project or investment size – for example, an $800M stadium project or a $1T infrastructure package. But as we seek to recover from this crisis the size of the stimulus package can’t be the full story. These capital injections must be able to tell us how investments built more than just a stadium, a bridge, or a highway. They must also catalyze communities to employ diverse contractors and vendors, and ensure individuals from impacted communities can upskill, work and earn a good wage. While these will be stated goals of the capital projects these outcomes don’t just happen. They require intentionality and transparency.

The recipients of federal stimulus funds should have specific goals regarding their engagement of the local workforce and local and diverse vendors, and by requiring regular, transparent reporting on their progress toward those goals it will ensure:

• Stimulus Spending Benefits the Community. Set local workforce engagement goals and have an accountability framework to incent the recipients of federal funds to engage local communities and encourage investment in workforce development programs that will build pathways to economic opportunity. 
• Equitable Distribution of Economic Stimulus: Small businesses often lack the opportunity to participate in large capital work. By incenting local and diverse vendor participation legislators will ensure a more equitable distribution of resources beyond large prime contractors to the vendors most closely connected to the community most likely to attract and retain a diverse, local workforce.
• Real Time Data Guides Decision-Making:  Collecting real-time data will provide project administrators with the ability to make more-informed hiring and resource decisions. Real-time data will allow project managers and policy-makers throughout the life of a project to evaluate a project’s progress toward its goals and to engage the small business community and workforce infrastructure to achieve better outcomes.
• The Elimination of Fraud and Wage Theft: Fraud and wage theft exist on projects across America. By requiring a platform for regular reporting during the project, legislators will be able to track payments between contractors ensuring economic stimulus dollars are making their way to the entities doing the work, and will also be able to track payroll records to ensure compliance in wage amounts and root out wage theft to some of our most vulnerable communities.

Local and minority contractors and businesses must have the opportunity to rebuild our communities and employ hardworking Americans from where these projects will take place. Contractors and subcontractors should be expected to utilize local hiring preferences and subcontractors should receive prompt payment when services are rendered.  Effective enforcement tools must be legislated to ensure transparency, build trust, root out fraud, and track the impact of the localized impact of the stimulus.

Setting goals and incorporating accountability mechanisms isn’t completely novel, but the scale of the proposed stimulus spending creates a unique opportunity to catalyze recovery in our impacted communities. We must build on what’s been done before, provide greater guidance to entities that will receive funds to achieve consistency and transparency, allow for communities hardest hit by the effects of the COVID-19 to benefit from the stimulus and ultimately enable American citizens the opportunity to see the economic impact of their tax dollars at work.