DAS 140 and DAS 142: deadlines, penalties, and how to file

On California public works, the DAS 140 and the DAS 142 are two separate apprenticeship forms with two separate deadlines, and contractors confuse them constantly. The DAS 140 tells the apprenticeship committees you were awarded the contract. The DAS 142 requests actual apprentices to be dispatched to the job. Filing one does not satisfy the other, and both are enforced by the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards.

What is the DAS 140?

The DAS 140 is the Public Works Contract Award Information form. It notifies the applicable apprenticeship committees in your craft that you have been awarded a public works contract and states how you intend to meet your apprenticeship obligation. It is a notice, not a request for workers. You send it after award, whether or not you plan to hire apprentices yourself, because the obligation to employ apprentices on the job exists regardless of your own workforce.

The DAS 140 is due within 10 days of the contract award or execution, and in every case before the job starts. Send it to the apprenticeship committee for each craft or trade you will use on the project. If you are already approved to train, or you belong to a committee, you note that on the form.

What is the DAS 142?

The DAS 142 is the Request for Dispatch of an Apprentice. This is the form that actually asks a committee to send apprentices to your job. You file it when you need apprentices dispatched, and you must give the committee at least 72 hours notice, not counting weekends and holidays, before the apprentice is needed on site. The lead time exists so the committee can find and dispatch a qualified apprentice.

What is the underlying obligation the forms serve?

The forms are not the obligation. They are the paperwork around it. The real requirement on a California public work is that a certain ratio of the work be performed by registered apprentices, and that you contribute training funds for the apprenticeable hours you use. The DAS 140 announces that you are on a covered job and states how you will meet that duty. The DAS 142 is how you actually bring apprentices onto the site. If you file both forms perfectly but never employ apprentices in the required ratio, you have still failed the underlying obligation, which is the more expensive failure.

This is why the forms cannot be treated as a one-time administrative task and forgotten. The DAS 140 goes out at award, but the ratio is measured over the life of the project, against hours actually worked. A contractor who sends the DAS 140, skips the DAS 142, and staffs the job entirely with journeyworkers will finish out of ratio, and the clean DAS 140 does nothing to cure it. The forms and the ratio are two halves of one duty, and the forms exist to make the ratio happen.

Which committees do the forms go to?

Both forms are sent to the apprenticeship committees in the crafts you will use, and this is where contractors slip. You do not send one DAS 140 to a single office. You send it to the applicable committee for each separate craft or trade on the project, because a job with electricians, laborers, and operating engineers touches three different apprenticeship programs, each with its own committee. If you are already a member of a committee or approved to train in a craft, you note that on the form for that craft. Missing a craft's committee is the same as not filing for that craft at all.

What are the penalties for missing them?

Apprenticeship violations on California public works are enforced under Labor Code section 1777.7, which allows civil penalties for each calendar day of noncompliance, and can escalate for knowing violations, up to debarment from public work for repeat offenders. The exact per-day amount is set by the Labor Commissioner within the statutory ceiling. The practical exposure is larger than the form: failing to request apprentices at all means your apprentice hours fall short of the required ratio, which is a separate and often bigger violation.

The point is that these are avoidable penalties. Unlike a wage dispute, which can turn on a classification judgment, the DAS 140 and DAS 142 are pure calendar compliance. You either sent the form to the right committee on time or you did not.

How do you file DAS 140 and DAS 142 correctly?

1. Identify every craft or trade you will use on the public works project, because each one has its own apprenticeship committee.
2. Send the DAS 140 to each craft committee within 10 days of award, and before the project starts.
3. When you need apprentices on site, file the DAS 142 with at least 72 hours notice, excluding weekends and holidays.
4. Track apprentice hours against journeyworker hours as the job runs, so you can prove you met the required ratio at closeout.
5. Keep proof of transmission for both forms with your certified payroll records.

The reason contractors miss these is not that the rules are hard. It is that the forms live outside the payroll workflow, so they get remembered late. A compliance system that watches the award date and the schedule can prompt the DAS 140 the week of award and the DAS 142 before the crew ramps, which turns a memory problem into a checklist.

Buildalytic tracks the award date, the crafts on the job, and the apprentice hours as payroll comes in, so the DAS 140 and DAS 142 windows are flagged before they close, and the apprentice ratio is monitored as evidence, not reconstructed after the fact.

Do these forms apply outside California?

The DAS 140 and DAS 142 are specific to California public works, administered by the state Division of Apprenticeship Standards. Other states are not exempt from apprenticeship rules, they simply use different mechanisms. Federal Davis-Bacon projects carry apprenticeship registration and ratio requirements enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor, and clean-energy projects claiming Inflation Reduction Act credits carry their own labor-hours, ratio, and participation requirements with a documented good-faith request process. Several other states run their own apprenticeship utilization rules on state-funded work. The forms differ, the deadlines differ, and the enforcing agency differs, but the underlying idea is consistent: public and incentivized work is expected to train the next generation of the trades, and you have to document that you did.

The takeaway for a contractor working across jurisdictions is that you cannot carry one state's process to another and assume you are covered. A California contractor that files a flawless DAS 140 has done nothing for a federal apprenticeship obligation on an out-of-state job. Each program has to be handled on its own terms, which is exactly the kind of jurisdictional bookkeeping that gets missed when it is tracked by memory instead of by a system that knows which rules attach to which project.