A worry free, time saving, compliant payroll

The Davis-Bacon Act mandates that contractors who receive at least $2000 from the government must file weekly payroll reports. There is a total of 31 compliance issues in the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts. The prevailing wage must also be adhered to for all trades and apprentices.

What can contractors easily do to have a compliant payroll... without errors? Compliant Client by eMars is the answer.

This system requires no installation or maintenance. It provides immediate, concurrent, real time visibility of all payroll records of the sub, prime, plus - the owner agency. All screens are printable. Every submitted payroll is audited, on line and in real time, against the wage determination and all 31 causes that are in support of Davis-Bacon and Related Acts.

The results of comparisons to the provisions set forth in the act are immediately reported, allowing corrections to be made promptly. A typical payroll is prepared in less than eight minutes.

The following are questions about eMars and the Compliant Client system answered by Woody Chamberlain, President of eMars and Ed Sambuchi, Director of Customer Service:

Why would a construction company use Compliant Client by eMars?
Ease of use backed by the best support in the industry are two strong reasons. eMars designed this system with considerable input from the Department of Labor, agencies and contractors. We are viewed as the most usable and user friendly system available.

Our clients, all 48,000+, have not had any random Department of Labor audits for the past three years.

What happens when construction companies don’t adhere to the compliance issues of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931?
They can be fined, debarred, or be put in jail.

Are there other construction companies relying on Compliant Client during this current pandemic? Can Compliant Client help a construction company during this current pandemic?
Many construction companies are relying on Compliant Client by eMars. We have done many Covid projects because of our ability to quickly set up a project and report in a timely manner.

How long is the learning curve associated with using the Compliant Client system?
Thirty minutes. Competitors take three to four times as long.

Tell me about ‘customer service’ as it relates to eMars/Compliant Client and your customers.
eMars provides the best support in the industry. We basically manage the subcontractors for the prime with respect to the payroll report. If a user needs help, we will reply with a phone call or email in 15 minutes.

Does Compliant Client identify critical errors in a construction company’s payroll?
Absolutely. The notice is on line in real time - similar to spell check.

How many compliance issues are there in the Davis-Bacon Act?
There are 31 compliance issues. So, if your company has 400 employees, there are 12,400 opportunities to be out of compliance.

Does Compliant Client use less paper than other systems?
Compliant Client is paperless. The only time paper is required is if an auditor insists on paper. eMars has trained over 200 auditors who do not require any paper since they have access to the electronic records.

Is Compliant Client another program that you add to your computer system?
The only requirements are a computer and access to the internet. There is no need to disrupt existing systems with the addition of another program.

What does eMars /Compliant Client do to preserve the privacy and sanctity of the information it stores?
In addition to a firewall, eMars encrypts all the sensitive data in the data base, commonly referred to as ‘at rest data’. No other competitor provides this double layer of encryption. eMars also preserves data for seven years, while competitors only store information for three years.

Compared to manual input of information, is there a significant saving of time and money?
This saving can range from 20 to 90 per cent.

Is there a limit of subcontractors that can be added under a main contractor?
There is no limit to the amount of subcontractors that can be added under a main contractor.

Is there a limit to the amount of employees that can be input into the system?
No. In fact, we easily handle over 5000 employees on a single payroll; competitors can only manage a few hundred.

Is there an audit trail with your system?
Yes. Nothing is ever eliminated from the system. In fact, if an error is detected, the error 25will be preserved along with the correction. A complete audit trail is always available.

Has eMars/Compliant Client ever been hacked?
No - we’ve never been hacked. eMars conducts third party penetration tests on a regular basis to insure integrity of the system.

Has the Compliant Client system supported large projects?
eMars/Compliant Client has many large projects including the largest Davis-Bacon project in the USA for the last five years - the nuclear power plant in Georgia.

Are there pricing options?
Yes. eMars provides a monthly option, a firm fixed fee for one or a basket of projects, an annual or multi - year contract option with ability to negotiate an acceptable fee.

For more information, contact Woody Chamberlain at: 480-595-0466 or by email at: Woody.chamberlain@wh347.com
Please visit: emarsinc.com

A steely determination

J&M Steel Solutions is a steel erector that – through the work of its dedicated team of experts – strives daily to achieve the best project results possible

Ever since Craig Madsen and Scott Jeppson set up J&M Steel Solutions in April of 2004, the Lehi, Utah-based steel erection company has accumulated over 270 years of experience among its team of specialists and has successfully completed close to 700 projects. Both Craig and Scott had already forged for themselves good careers within the steel erection industry prior to 2004. With Craig having developed experience in overseeing company operations and internal/external effectiveness, and Scott being highly effective in managing field crews to deliver maximum output, the pair believed that the gelling of their respective skills would prove fruitful in running a business of their own, and so it has proved to be.

“Scott and I share a vision of a company where hard work, dedication and dependability is appreciated, and we feel like we have accomplished that vision with J&M Steel Solutions,” co-owner Craig explains. “Together, we wanted to help transform the image around steel erection and iron work, moving it away from being seen as kind-of a separate entity on job sites, and making it feel a more integral part of a wider team helping to deliver projects. This has been very rewarding, and has helped the business develop trust, and close working relationships, with respected general contractors and owners in the Western States.”

The types of project completed by the company range from small compressor buildings to large facilities such as the Nucor Manufacturing Plant in Brigham City, Utah. Indeed, J&M Steel Solutions’ handiwork can be seen in a wealth of industries, from gas and energy, and mining, to industrial, aviation, and the commercial/retail sector. “One of the main reasons that contractors and owners use J&M Steel Solutions over and over again, is our ability to build projects quickly, efficiently and safely, whether it be a large airplane hangar, a multi-story office building, a hospital, or a one million square foot warehouse,” Craig continues. “As a company, we own all of our work, and our people have the diversity of experience and capabilities to take on virtually any challenge with honesty, integrity and total commitment.”

The sheer variety of different projects that the company has shown itself capable of delivering has helped it to weather any economic downturns that have occurred during the last 16 years. J&M Steel Solutions tends to attract interest from those contractors and owners that are tackling larger, more complex projects that require specialized service providers to bring them to fruition.

One of its recently completed undertakings can be found in West Valley, Utah. The Fairbourne office building is a nine-story, ‘Class A’ building, which required the incorporation of columns and base plates weighing in at an impressive 23,000-to-25,000 pounds. “This was a particularly unique project, not only due to its size, but also for its inclusion of a large solar array on the rooftop, and a 100-foot long pedestrian bridge connecting the building to a parking structure on the opposite side of the road,” Craig details. “In recent months, we have also found ourselves tasked with helping in the construction of several temples for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one in Pocatello, Idaho, and another which is currently taking shape in Saratoga Springs, Utah. These are truly beautiful buildings, and we have several more in our pipeline that we look forward to working on in the next six-to-nine months.”

People positivity
The ability to deliver the results expected by its customers is at the heart of the company’s success, but Craig and Scott know that this simply would not be achievable without the work of J&M Steel Solutions’ highly motivated employees. “Simply put,” Craig says, “we would not be the successful business that we are today without our people, and we make it a point to remind our teams repeatedly that it is far easier for J&M Steel Solutions to be awarded work as a result of their hard work, their ability to hit construction targets, and to do so safely and responsibly.

“Letting our people know that they are massively valued is such an important thing for Scott and myself, and we have always believed in the positivity of treating people as individuals who matter, as opposed to being just seen as a commodity. We have gone to great lengths to provide our employees with annual bonuses to reflect their work, comprehensive health insurance, 401K retirement plans, and various support structures to aid their personal development, and I think that really sets J&M Steel Solutions apart as an employer of choice.”

Collectively, the company’s teams have all had to negotiate a year to date that has been defined by the global Covid-19 pandemic, and that Craig accurately refers to as being a ‘rollercoaster’. Fortunately for J&M Steel Solutions, in Utah construction was designated early on as being an essential business, meaning that the company could continue working. Nevertheless, adjustments to usual working practices had to be made, from explaining to all site teams that if they were to travel out to a job, they would first need to pre-diagnose themselves as being free of any Covid-19 symptoms, to closing its office down for two months and have the vast majority of its people working from home. At the same time, any staff forced to isolate due to the pandemic were given the peace of mind of knowing that their wages would continue to be paid by the company.

“I have to say, I share with Scott huge admiration for our people who did a fantastic job in navigating the big transformation we had to make during the early months of the pandemic,” Craig enthuses. “Now that we are back on a number of job sites, there are also a number of things we have had to adapt to, what with social distancing and mask wearing being required across almost all locations. For those situations that do require our people to be in closer proximity, we have introduced additional PPE and hand sanitizers to reduce the risk of contracting the virus. Again, our guys have been awesome in complying with these new demands, and we absolutely appreciate their continued efforts.”

Sharing expertise
Turning the topic of conversation to the future, Craig is keen to see the company build upon the foundations it has laid to date. To do so, it hopes to enhance its capabilities – by doing things such as taking on the construction of taller, multi-story buildings for one - and take on an increasing number of new projects. “In the last few years,” he adds, “we have become more and more involved in what we identify as being ‘design-build-works, and we would like to continue with work in that area wherever possible. In the case of such projects, J&M Steel Solutions is brought in early at the design phase and asked to provide its expertise and opinion as to how best to economize key aspects such as materials and labour, before commencing with the work itself.

“Elsewhere, we are hopeful that the oil and gas industry may pick up again in the near future, as this has been somewhere where we have had good success in past years, and we are seeing more movement in the precious metals and mining sectors, where we anticipate extending our reach going forward. In conclusion, we are cautiously optimistic for what the future holds, safe in the knowledge that when the market does return to full strength, we have the right people and the right expertise in place to be awarded the projects that will help J&M Steel Solutions to grow.”

J&M Steel Solutions
www.j-msteel.com
Services: Steel erection company

Pioneering change in the specialty contractor industryspecialty industry

A leader in the field of drywall and plaster, BakerTriangle provides a complete service for its clients, guiding them through a project from concept to completion

Boasting seven divisions across five Texas cities, BakerTriangle entered its 46th year of business having completed projects across more than 20 US states. A small plaster company when it was founded in 1974 by Bob Baker, BakerTriangle added a drywall division in the late 1970s when Bob’s son, Steve, joined the fold. The drywall scope quickly grew alongside the plaster division, and by the 1990s, the company began to expand across Texas. Today, BakerTriangle is recognized as the ‘4th largest wall and ceiling firm in the United States’ and was recently named Texas and Louisiana’s ‘Specialty Contractor of the Year’.

“Although we began as a plastering company, we quickly found our growth and core market to be in the drywall and acoustical space,” explains Bryan Baker, BakerTriangle’s CEO and the third generation of the Baker family to enter the business. “The past few years have been a blast; we’ve pushed several new scopes of work hard in our markets. After some significant research and benchmarking with key client accounts, we found numerous scopes that were not well covered in our regions. We started a division solely focused on prefabrication and we also started concentrating on exterior cladding, which includes metal panels systems, ACM, rainscreens, formed panels, cementitious panels, along with our core sectors of drywall, acoustical, plaster & EIFS, and window treatments. Owners and GCs are now seeing the benefit of bringing us in early as a key trade partner to help with both budgeting and design assist efforts as project plans progress. It’s been an awesome adventure to see the added value we can bring when we are brought on early in design to help with those key elements of a project’s trajectory.”

Active in a number of industries, including education, healthcare, retail, the commercial sector, entertainment, and hospitality, BakerTriangle is especially passionate about its prefabrication group. ‘The future of the industry’ according to Bryan, prefab is an area that the company believes offers significant opportunity for expansion and process improvement.

“We have a large facility in Richardson, Texas, that covers the needs of our core prefabrication process focus - exterior wall panel systems,” Bryan says. “We look at this facility as manufacturing, not construction. Our goal is to take all the components that typically get brought out between three to seven different trades on a jobsite and combine them in one contract that can be manufactured under one roof. You might ask why we have put such a focus on exterior panelization, but I think it’s down to the direction of skilled labor, speed to market, reduction in onsite waste and clutter, elimination of unsafe jobsite conditions, quality assurance, and project schedule certainty that it offers.”

Bryan suggests that a couple of recent projects completed in Austin, one of Texas’ most advanced markets, have really put the spotlight on the successes and benefits to designing with prefabrication in mind. Both projects are located in downtown Austin, and are two of the newest hospitality projects to change the landscape of the downtown silhouette, with one hotel being 32 stories tall and the other standing at 33 stories tall.

“The jobs in Austin had a ‘zero laydown policy’ for all trades and so panels were shipped directly to the job site, complete with glazing and full façade finish, and picked off the back of trucks for installation. As the concrete structure went vertical, our team enclosed a floor in two nights during the pour’s seven-day sequence,” Bryan reports. “We’ve had some pretty spectacular projects over the years, and this was right up there. My wife and kids are tired of me pointing at tall buildings and popular Texas venues and yelling ‘we helped build that!’.

“Sometimes we can get lost in our workload and forget to look up at the end product. We’ve assisted in moving professional sports teams to new homes, helped museums tell the story of our rich history, aided the elderly transition into lifestyles that can provide them with more support, helped communities heal those in need, and created places of worship and learning and adventure. We are blessed to work in a great industry with so much passion for what we do and what it stands for.”

Relationships business
A family business at its core - the firm has donated more than $1.1m to local non-profit programs over the years - BakerTriangle’s success has been driven by its close-knit community culture. The company has always made it clear that, in order to execute a project successfully, it requires a sound bid, a thorough budget, continued focus and accountability, office support, field supervision, and – most importantly – talented men and women to put the work into place in the field. As far as Bryan is concerned, each individual that makes up BakerTriangle, and the skills they bring to the table, are what sets the company apart from its competition.

“Our customer relationships are built on the foundation of results and results are achieved through the expertise of the men and women at BakerTriangle. Our success is defined by our people,” Bryan asserts. “This is such a relationship business. Without relationships, we are a commodity. Commodities typically correlate to value being found in the lowest bidder. There is so much more that we can offer, and that this industry can offer, outside of just being ‘the low price’. Anyone reading this knows that low price on bid day does not mean low price at the end of the job. Low price certainly does not mean the product is in the owner’s best interest.

“We set ourselves apart with our people. They innovate, they create, they problem solve, and they please. The old adage ‘people work with people they like’ has proven to be a lasting proverb that resounds within our walls. We aim to proactively seek solutions as we are in a problem-solving business. That often means being creative and collaborating internally and externally to work things out. We hire for these characteristics and continually train our people about the importance of being proactive and making sure that the client and the end user is getting not only the best quality work, but also our full attention to detail.”

Market trailblazer
The value BakerTriangle places on its staff is evident in the company’s commitment to safety. A company proud of its excellent safety record, BakerTriangle is dedicated to maintaining a culture of safety and accountability, and places great emphasis on the importance of staff training and improving jobsite conditions.

“Safety is all about culture,” Bryan declares. “If it’s not discussed and practiced, it is forgotten. My dad likes to say we were the first drywall company with a safety director. Safety is something that is worn on the toolbelt, right beside the drywall saw and the screws. From the top, we prioritize a culture of safety, making sure every employee returns home safely to his or her family at the end of the day.”

Safety has, of course, been under the spotlight in 2020 as the world deals with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but BakerTriangle’s devoted approach to the subject means that the company was in the perfect position to tackle the virus head on. Quick to act on all CDC guidelines within the business, the firm harnessed its strong communication chain to make effective adjustments across its network. Having made it through the lockdown stage of the pandemic, BakerTriangle is now ready to look to the future. Eager to leverage the latest technology, the business recently invested in a highly-advanced CNC machine designed for cutting drywall, which will not only help to increase efficiency, but also reduce waste. The company is now planning a continued push for growth in the prefabrication market and in its ability to ‘bundle’ multiple scopes.

“We have clients that are really coming around to seeing the value of rolling up scopes to create one point of contact and one filter of communication,” Bryan reveals. “It makes for a more seamless process.”

“Speaking to prefab and its outlook, we are very happy with the direction of our prefabrication operation. We are starting to see clients requesting work outside our current markets and that’s a testament to our performance and capabilities. The industry will continue to see a push towards offsite prefabrication and modularization, and we plan to be one of the trailblazers leading that charge. We’ve started to explore prefabricated interior components, ‘kit of parts’ concepts, and in-house fabrication of key parts and modules. We also continue to educate ourselves on how we can better push the realm of offsite construction within our industry.”

In a dynamic time of change and transformation for the construction industry, Bryan is aware that companies like BakerTriangle need to stay nimble and agile to survive and thrive, but he is certain the firm is up to task.

“We have to be willing to adapt. We have to be willing to try new things, improve on failures, and find our successes,” Bryan remarks. “We owe a great deal of our success to the dedicated employees of this company. We have over 120 team members that have worked for 15 years or more with the company and they are what makes us stand out from the pack. We also would not be where we are without the great contractors, owners and suppliers we have had the privilege of working with. This support network inspires me with confidence for the future.”

BakerTriangle
www.bakertriangle.com
Product and Services: Drywall, acoustical, prefabrication, metal panels, plaster & EIFS, window treatments