Why a crew is harder to cover than an office.
- Public and private jobs on one payroll
- Hours that swing with bids, weather and season
- Crews living far from shop and site
- Layoffs between projects
An office plan assumes the same people work the same hours in the same place. A contractor's census breaks all three: the shop is in one town, the job in another, the crew lives somewhere else, and hours climb and fall with the work.
Public works add a wage question. Qualifying employer-paid benefits can count toward the prevailing wage, while cash paid instead of benefits is simply wages, so a contribution change can ripple into the hourly rate on public jobs. We don't calculate prevailing-wage credits, so have payroll or your prevailing-wage adviser confirm the numbers first.
Four levers we pull for contractors.
Contribution by class
Field and office don't have to be funded alike.
Set the company's share for employee-only coverage and for dependents, and decide whether field and office get different splits. For the prevailing-wage credit, L&I generally spreads benefit cost over every hour an employee works, public and private, and counts only employer contributions.
Illustrative: a contractor pays $9,000 a year toward one carpenter's medical, and the carpenter works 1,800 hours across all jobs. Spread over every hour, not just the public ones, that's $5.00 an hour. It's arithmetic, not a credit determination.
Network by where crews live
Choose for the towns your people go home to.
Run each employee's home ZIP code against each network before comparing premiums. Breadth matters more for a crew spread across counties than for a shop where everyone lives close. We quote group medical with Premera Blue Cross, Regence BlueShield, Asuris Northwest Health, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare.
Funding method, tested on one census
Fully insured, level-funded and ICHRA, priced on the same people.
Level-funded plans, which we quote with UnitedHealthcare, Nationwide, Angle Health and Cigna, are underwritten on your own group: one fixed monthly payment covers a claims fund, stop-loss insurance and administration. Underwriting may price the crew higher or decline it, renewals track your claims, and a surplus refund is possible, not promised.
An ICHRA gives each class a set monthly allowance toward individual coverage, so hourly field and salaried office staff can get different amounts. Bid public work? Confirm how a new funding method is credited before switching.
Voluntary for the paycheck
Medical pays the hospital. Something has to cover the rent.
A broken wrist at a weekend soccer game isn't an L&I claim. Accident and hospital indemnity coverage, employee-paid through payroll deduction, pays cash after a covered event, and disability coverage replaces part of a paycheck. These sit alongside medical, and on-the-job injuries for L&I-covered workers still go through L&I.
Plan in the slow season. Enroll before the rush.
Slow season: rebuild the census
Gather each employee's date of birth, home ZIP code and coverage tier, and flag who works public jobs, while the office has time.
Before bid season: quote and choose
Price every option on that census, with payroll modeling the hourly benefit value for public work. An ICHRA needs written notice at least 90 days before the plan year.
Enrollment: meet crews where the day starts
Short sessions at the yard before crews roll out, live virtual sessions for distant sites and one-on-one follow-up, at no extra fee for client teams.
Busy season: keep up with turnover
Your administrator enters hires and terminations in Employee Navigator, we handle carrier changes, and the third-party COBRA administrator we coordinate sends notices. Vendor fees may apply.
On the BIAW plan? Price the market before you renew.
Belong to a local home builders association? Your medical may come through the BIAW Health Insurance Program. Because employers buying through an association aren't small employers for rating purposes, Washington's small-group rating rules don't apply to those plans (RCW 48.21.047). Small-group rates can vary only by geographic area, family size, age and wellness activities, with adult age rates kept within 3 to 1.
Neither route wins by default, so we price the BIAW renewal, small-group, level-funded and ICHRA options on one census and compare each employee's cost by tier. Our association plan comparison shows the method.
Benefit Experts is a trade name of Washington Insurance Brokers LLC, an independent broker not affiliated with or endorsed by BIAW, its local associations, its administrators, or its insurers.
What to send, and what to flag.
Send us
A census with dates of birth, home ZIP codes and coverage tiers, plus your plan summary, renewal and current contribution. Association members: add the rate sheet and exit notice terms.
Flag for us
Who works public jobs or variable hours, who leaves between projects, any related companies under common ownership, and owners or relatives on payroll.
Test the next crew change before you choose.
Before settling on a company contribution, compare two separate enrollment assumptions: the crew you expect at the start and a plausible smaller or larger crew later. Keep each proposal on the same assumption for that comparison. Record who is eligible, who is expected to enroll and which dependent tiers are involved; payroll headcount alone is not the enrollment total.
Use the association renewal comparison to organize the proposals. The medical comparison workbook can show the budget under each separate enrollment assumption. Its annual figures assume that roster stays unchanged for twelve months, so they are scenarios, not a forecast of a changing year.
Then name the person who updates the roster, the person who tells the broker about a change and the person who verifies the carrier record and payroll deduction. Ask what must be reconfirmed before using a quote after the crew changes. Keep public-works credit calculations with the payroll or prevailing-wage adviser already involved.
What contractors ask before they switch.
Our crew shrinks every winter. Does that put the group plan at risk?
Small-group status follows last calendar year's average headcount, not this month's crew. Participation is the pressure point: carriers can require up to 75% of eligible employees to enroll, or 100% for groups of three or fewer, so call us before a layoff changes who is eligible.
We're close to 50 employees. Do the ACA employer rules apply to us?
Average last calendar year's full-time employees (130 or more hours of service a month) plus full-time equivalents: each month, total everyone else's hours, capping each person at 120, and divide by 120. Related companies under common ownership count together. Our full-time equivalent calculator runs the months, and the ACA compliance guide covers what follows.
If we move pay from wages into benefits, does our L&I premium drop?
Not by itself. Most Washington workers' comp premiums are figured on hours worked, not payroll dollars. Weigh the whole package instead: contributions, tax treatment, any valid prevailing-wage credit and administration.
Official references: L&I public works guidance for contractors, the L&I index of selected public works topics, L&I premium rating features, the IRS applicable large employer rules and the Office of the Insurance Commissioner on small business plans. General information, not legal or tax advice.
Bring the crew list and the next bid calendar.
Send a census and your renewal or association rate sheet. We'll line up the options and flag what payroll should confirm. No obligation.