STrOp · Learn
Practical knowledge for specialty contractors
Compliance, change management, project controls, and the data discipline that compounds across bids. Written for California specialty subs — owners, PMs, estimators, and the field.
Apprenticeship on public works — DAS 140, DAS 142, and the 1-to-5 ratio
The two notices you owe the apprenticeship committees and the journeyman-to-apprentice ratio auditors actually count — miss them and the penalties accrue per violation, per day.
Award a job — what flips when you win
The Award Job button is the moment a pursuit becomes a job — what the three-field form records, what changes underneath, and the setup work that's deliberately still yours to do.
Baseline vs current vs actuals — the three views every project lives in
A baseline is the promise. Current is the forecast. Actuals are the receipts. Treating them as one number is how subs miss overruns until they're paying for them.
Build your crew roster
Add your workers once — name, classification, agreement, rate — and every timecard, schedule slot, and certified-payroll line downstream fills itself from the roster instead of being retyped.
California lien deadlines — preliminary notice, stop notice, mechanic's lien
The three deadlines that protect your right to get paid on a private California project. Miss one, lose the remedy.
Certified payroll — weekly cadence and DIR submission
When CPRs are due, what "work performed" means, and how STrOp builds the LCPtracker / eCPR export.
Closing the loop — warranty callbacks become next year's contingency
Most subs lose the warranty data trail because the callback lives in a different inbox than the estimate. The loop is short, the payoff is high, and the discipline is mostly about where the data lives.
Companies and contacts — who you bid, who pays
Set up the GCs, owners, and people you work with once — typed correctly — and every pursuit, proposal, and invoice downstream links to the right party automatically.
CSLB license renewal — windows, fees, and the gotchas
When the 60-day renewal window opens, what an "active" vs "inactive" renewal means, and what STrOp warns you about.
Daily log and photos from the field
Capture the day while it's happening — photos straight to the job from a phone, T&M and work-order records with signatures — so the project's story is written by the people on it, not reconstructed later.
DIR registration & renewal — California public works
Who needs to register, when annual renewal opens, and what STrOp checks before you bid a prevailing-wage job.
Dispatch board basics
The day's service calls, who's on each, and what's still unscheduled — run the board in the morning and every tech knows where they're going without a phone tree.
Earned value for trades — the four numbers that predict overruns
EVM without the certification. PV, EV, AC, and the four ratios that tell you a job is going sideways before the final pay app does.
Enter and approve timecards
The foreman's daily crew entry and the PM's approval pass — how hours become job cost, payroll data, and the record that survives an audit.
How estimate pricing is calculated
Every estimate line runs the same four-step recipe — pad the quantity, extend by unit cost (tax on material only), add overhead then profit margin, round. Profit is a margin; overhead is a markup or a margin, set per estimate.
Import a DIR wage determination (and keep it current)
Load a California prevailing-wage determination — including its scheduled July-1-style increase — so your projects validate pay against the right floor, and refresh it when DIR reissues.
Lien waivers — the four California forms and when each is safe to sign
Conditional vs unconditional, progress vs final — the §8132–§8138 statutory forms as a two-by-two matrix, and the one rule that keeps you from waiving rights for a check that hasn't cleared.
Log an opportunity and work the pipeline
From "heard about a job" to a pursuit moving through Qualify, Budget, Bidding, and Bid Submitted — where work enters STrOp and how the board tracks it to award.
Meal and rest breaks — the PAGA exposure on your timecards
California's break rules in crew terms, the premium owed per missed break, and why the daily attestation on the timecard is the record that keeps a slip from compounding into a seven-figure claim.
Migrate your data into STrOp
How a company moves onto STrOp from whatever it runs today — master data first, in-flight jobs at their current state, and the old system's paper trail as a searchable archive. Nothing re-entered, nothing silently dropped.
Pay app submission checklist
What goes in a monthly pay application, what the GC's reviewer looks for, and what STrOp assembles automatically.
PCO vs CO — proposal versus executed change
A PCO is your priced ask. A CO is the executed contract amendment. Until the CO is signed, the work isn't billable on a pay app.
Prevailing wage rates — how to find the right one
Which rate applies to which worker on which project, where DIR publishes them, and how STrOp pulls the right one onto your timecards.
Productivity rate capture — today's timecard becomes tomorrow's bid
The estimator's productivity assumption is the single biggest source of bid variance. The fix is a feedback loop, and the loop only works if timecard data lives in the same system as the assemblies.
PWC-100 — is your public works project registered?
The awarding body's DIR project registration is what your certified payroll submits against — how to verify it exists, find the DIR project ID, and what to do when it's missing.
Retainage release — when, how much, and what to chase
Standard 5–10% withholding through the project, partial release at substantial completion, final release after closeout. The clocks and triggers contractors miss.
RFI vs Change Event — when to file which
An RFI asks a question. A Change Event records an impact. Treating them the same is how recovery slips through the cracks.
Schedule the crew week
Drag workers onto the week's work orders once, and the plan flows downstream — the field sees where to be, and the foreman's timecard starts from the crew you scheduled.
Send your first proposal
The proposal builds itself from your estimate — address it, shape what the GC sees, print the PDF, and mark it Submitted so your pipeline knows the bid is out.
Service agreements — cadence, visits, invoicing
Turn recurring maintenance into an agreement STrOp works from — the visit cadence generates the calls, the billing cadence drives the invoices, and neither depends on anyone remembering.
T&M tag — why the owner signature is everything
What a T&M tag is, what makes it legally enforceable, and what STrOp does when the signature is missing.
The STrOp glossary — what we call things, and why
Construction has never agreed on its words — the same term means three different things depending on who's talking. Here's the one name STrOp uses for each thing, and the words we deliberately split.
Your estimate is your earliest budget — not the contract value
The contract value tells you what the GC owes you. The estimate tells you what the job is supposed to cost. Confusing them is how subs miss a 30% margin compression.
See STrOp in action
Single-pipeline operations for California specialty contractors — bid through warranty.
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