L&I Intents and Affidavits: Washington Certified Payroll

If you're a contractor or subcontractor on a Washington public works job, you're working under one of the more distinctive prevailing wage systems in the country. On top of weekly certified payroll, Washington puts every business on the project through two filings with the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I), known together as Intents and Affidavits. Payment on the contract is tied to both, so a missed filing can stall your money even when every worker was paid correctly. This guide covers who is covered, how to file and look up Intents and Affidavits, what certified payroll L&I expects, and where the federal Form WH-347 fits in.

Who's covered: RCW 39.12

Washington's prevailing wage law lives in chapter 39.12 RCW. It covers public works, meaning construction, reconstruction, maintenance, and repair done for the state, counties, cities, school districts, and other public agencies. It also covers building service maintenance under public contracts. The Department of Labor & Industries publishes the prevailing rates of wage by county and by trade, and it administers compliance. Coverage questions can get fact-specific (off-site fabrication, maintenance contracts, mixed funding), so when in doubt, verify with L&I or your awarding agency before the first worker clocks in. L&I's public works hub is the official starting point: lni.wa.gov public works projects.

L&I Intents and Affidavits

This is the part that surprises contractors coming from other states. Every contractor and subcontractor on a covered project, at every tier, files two forms with L&I online through the Contractor Portal in My L&I. L&I has long called this system PWIA, short for Prevailing Wage Intents & Affidavits.

Both forms are per contractor and per project, so a general contractor with five subs means six Intents and six Affidavits. L&I charges a $40 filing fee for each Intent and each Affidavit (WAC 296-127-040 and 296-127-045). On contracts over $10,000, the approved Intent has to be posted on the job site. For very small projects of $5,000 or less, L&I uses a single combined Intent/Affidavit form in place of the two filings.

The timing is what costs people money. File the Intent late and your first pay application sits unpaid. Forget the Affidavit at closeout and your retainage waits, sometimes months after the crew has moved on. A general contractor also has to confirm that every sub has filed before its own paperwork is complete, so one missing sub can hold up retainage on the whole job.

How to look up Intents and Affidavits

L&I keeps a public search of the Intents and Affidavits filed on Washington public works, and you don't need a My L&I account to use it. Open L&I's Prevailing Wage Intents and Affidavits search and search one of two ways, then narrow the results if you need to:

• Search by ID. Choose the form type (Intent, Affidavit, or Combined) and enter the form ID to pull up one specific filing.
• Search by name. Every field is optional. You can search by prime contractor, by any contractor on the job (prime or subcontractor), by project, or by public agency.
• Narrow it down. The advanced filters add UBI, contractor registration number, contract type, contract number (exact match only), county, and trade.

Primes use the search to check that every sub's Intent is approved before a pay application goes in, and again at closeout before asking for retainage. Subs use it to see what the prime filed, including the project name and contract number L&I has on record. If a search on the contract number comes back empty, try the project or agency name instead, because the contract number filter only returns exact matches.

Certified payroll records and the L&I portal

Washington also requires certified payroll itself. Since January 1, 2020, L&I has required weekly certified payroll reports to be filed online with L&I at least once a month on all public works projects, through the same My L&I portal that handles Intents and Affidavits. The records carry the familiar certified payroll content: each worker's name, classification, hours by day, rate of pay, usual benefits, gross, deductions, and net, certified as true and correct. The report is weekly even though the filing deadline is monthly, so keep each week's payroll clean as you go instead of rebuilding a month of it at once.

Overtime in Washington: watch the daily rules and 4-10s

Washington has its own overtime rules layered on top of prevailing wage, and public works scheduling in the state commonly involves four 10-hour days ("4-10s") under a valid work-schedule agreement. Whether hours beyond 8 in a day trigger a premium on your project depends on the applicable state rules and any scheduling agreement in place. Verify with L&I and your contract before assuming a 10-hour day is all straight time.

On federally funded work, the federal rule is simpler and unforgiving in a different way: overtime is owed on hours over 40 in the workweek, at 1.5× the base hourly rate plus fringe at straight time. The fringe is never multiplied by 1.5. Getting that multiplier wrong is the single most common math error on certified payroll, in Washington or anywhere else.

Federal overlap: when the WH-347 also applies

A Washington project that receives federal funds, such as highway money, FTA or FAA grants, or federally assisted housing, is typically covered by the Davis-Bacon Act as well as RCW 39.12. In that case both systems apply at once. You file your Intent, Affidavit, and L&I certified payroll on the state side, and you submit weekly federal certified payroll to the contracting agency, usually on Form WH-347 or an equivalent, with its signed Statement of Compliance. Where the state and federal rates differ for a classification, the general rule is that the higher applicable rate wins. Your contract documents should say which wage determinations apply; if they don't, ask before the first payroll, not after.

Looking up Washington prevailing wage rates

L&I publishes the prevailing rates by county and trade, with each classification showing an hourly rate that includes a usual-benefits component. Rates are updated periodically, and the rate that governs your job is generally tied to specific dates connected to your contract. Pull the rate for your county, your trade, and your project's applicable date from L&I's lookup, and keep a copy with your job records. Don't reuse a rate from a previous job in the same county; it may have changed.

Common mistakes on Washington public works

• Filing the Intent late, or not at all, then wondering why the awarding agency won't release payment.
• Forgetting the Affidavit at closeout, which holds up final payment and retainage long after the crew has moved on.
• Wrong classification, such as paying a laborer rate for work that L&I's scopes of work put under a higher-paid trade.
• Using a stale rate instead of the rate applicable to the project's effective date.
• Assuming state filings cover a federal job. On mixed funding, the WH-347 weekly submission is a separate obligation from the L&I filings.
• Overtime math errors, like multiplying the full package by 1.5 on federal work, or ignoring daily-hour rules on the state side.

How Certiwage helps

Certiwage takes your crew's hours and rates and produces a weekly certified payroll report with correct gross, overtime, and net. It applies the federal overtime formula and checks your fringe package against the required rate, so you catch a shortfall before you certify instead of hearing about it from an auditor. It stores only the last four digits of each SSN. Certiwage does not file anything with L&I or produce L&I's payroll upload file, so you still file the Intent, the Affidavit, and each month's certified payroll in My L&I yourself. Certiwage's job is making sure the numbers you put there are right. It is a document-preparation tool, not legal advice, and is not affiliated with L&I or the U.S. Department of Labor. Plans are on our pricing page, or compare another state's system in our California DIR eCPR guide.

The quickest way to sanity-check your numbers is to run one week through the free WH-347 builder. It needs no signup, and it checks the fringe and overtime math for you.