The Four Davis-Bacon Construction Types

Building

Building construction is the construction of sheltered enclosures with walk-in access, built to house people, machinery, equipment or supplies, including the installation of utilities and equipment inside them and site work that is incidental to the building. Offices, schools, hospitals, courthouses, warehouses, factories, parking garages and apartment buildings taller than four stories are building construction. Building determinations usually carry the highest rates and the most classifications in a county.

Residential

Residential construction is the construction, alteration or repair of single-family houses, townhouses and apartment buildings of no more than four stories, including incidental site work. The four-story line is the one that matters: a five-story apartment building is building construction. Residential determinations tend to list fewer classifications and, where they rest on surveys, older and lower rates.

Highway

Highway construction covers roads, streets, highways, runways, taxiways, alleys, trails, paths, parking areas and similar projects that are not incidental to building or heavy construction, together with the work that goes with them: grading, paving, curbs, drainage, signs and lighting. Many highway determinations also cover the bridges that carry those roads; a major bridge over navigable water is usually heavy construction instead.

Heavy

Heavy construction is everything that is not building, residential or highway: dams and reservoirs, water and sewer lines, treatment plants, pipelines, tunnels, flood control, dredging, railroads, utility work, major bridges and the like. Because the category is so broad, the Department issues separate heavy determinations in some states for water and sewer work or for dredging, and the determination's header says so.

Which one applies to a project

The contracting agency decides, from the character of the project as a whole, and attaches the determination it chooses to the bid documents and the contract. When a project has substantial, separable parts of different kinds, such as a building with a long access road, the agency can attach more than one determination and apply each to its part. When the work on a project is incidental to its main purpose, the main purpose's type governs all of it.

If you are bidding and the type looks wrong, ask the agency before bid opening; after award, the determination in the contract governs. The county pages on this site show every determination in force for the county, grouped by type, so you can see what each would require.