Everything here is checkable.

What we can hand you

License. California contractor license 1006147, active, carrying B general building, C-2 insulation and acoustical, C-6 cabinet and millwork, and C-36 plumbing. Verify it yourself at cslb.ca.gov. It takes under a minute and you should do it for every contractor you consider, not only us.

Experience modification rate. Our current EMR is 1.0. The rate letter from our workers' compensation carrier is available on request.

Insurance. General liability, workers' compensation and auto. Certificates and additional insured endorsements go out the same business day you ask for them.

ISNetworld. We are enrolled in ISN for contractor prequalification. If your facility uses ISN, we can be connected to your account rather than running a separate paper process.

Written safety programs. Our written programs were prepared for us by an outside safety firm rather than assembled internally from templates, and they are available for review as part of prequalification.

On site

A job hazard analysis before each phase, rather than one at the start of the project that nobody revisits. Daily toolbox talks. Lockout and tagout coordinated with your plant staff instead of announced to them. Hot work permits pulled through your process, because it is your facility and your permit system.

Where your site requires specific orientation or training before access, tell us at award. We will complete it before mobilization rather than losing the first morning to it.

And one standing rule worth stating plainly: on older buildings, if we encounter material we suspect contains asbestos, work stops at that location and it goes to a licensed abatement contractor for testing and removal before we continue. Abatement is separately licensed and regulated and we do not perform it. We would rather lose a day than put your people or ours in that position.

If you are the one doing the prequalifying

This section is written for the facility or project side rather than for us, because the questions below are the ones that actually separate contractors, and most prequalification packages do not ask them well.

Understand what EMR is before you set a threshold

The experience modification rate compares a company's workers' compensation loss history against the expected losses for its industry and payroll size. A rate of 1.0 is the industry baseline: exactly what a company of that type and size would be expected to experience. Below 1.0 is better than expected, above is worse. Many owners set a threshold somewhere near or below 1.0.

Two things are worth knowing. EMR is heavily influenced by company size, so a small contractor's rate is statistically noisy in a way a large one's is not, and a single claim moves it disproportionately. And it is a lagging measure of claims cost, not a direct measure of current site behavior. It belongs in a prequalification package. It should not be the only thing in one.

Ask for the certificate, and read the endorsement

A certificate of insurance shows coverage exists on the day it was issued. What matters for your project is usually the additional insured endorsement, which is the document that actually extends coverage to you, and the limits, which should be checked against what your contract requires rather than assumed adequate.

Ask for both. A contractor who takes a week to produce them is telling you something about how the rest of the project will go.

Know which platform you are actually using

ISNetworld, Avetta, PICS and Veriforce are the common contractor prequalification platforms. They are not interchangeable, and enrollment in one does not transfer to another.

Each carries a subscription cost for the contractor, which is why some smaller firms are not enrolled anywhere. That is not automatically a red flag, but it does mean you will be verifying documents yourself.

Verify the license against the scope

The single most useful and least used check. Look up the license and compare the classifications against what you are asking the contractor to perform. A firm self-performing work outside its classifications is a problem attached to your project, not only to theirs, and it tends to surface during a claim or an audit rather than during construction.

In California that is a thirty second check at cslb.ca.gov.

Ask what gets subcontracted

Then compare the answer to the classifications. Every contractor says they self-perform. The license tells you what they are entitled to self-perform, and the gap between the two answers is informative.