Apprenticeship Registration, Done in Days

Yes! Certified payroll tracks the IRA requirements, not the DoL requirements. Certified payroll will track prevailing wage, the 15% labor participation rate required by apprentices, and the ratio of journeyworkers to apprentices each day. Apprentix doesn’t track any of those things since the focus on Apprentix is to track the DoL’s requirements.

The IRA’s apprenticeship requirements trigger when you have 4 or more laborers or mechanics, of any occupation, for any amount of time. For example, if you have 2 people working for 2 weeks and 2 new people working the following two weeks, that’s still 4 people, no matter how long they worked or if they are doing the same or different jobs.Once you’ve had 4 people, you must have 1 apprentice. That triggers the need for a Registered Apprenticeship Program. You must then meet the labor requirement where 15% of your labor hours are performed by apprentices and you must maintain the apprentice to journeyman ratio for that occupation. Companies typically use certified payroll to report IRA compliance to meet these requirements.A Registered Apprenticeship Program has its own set of requirements which includes adherence to standards, monthly compliance reporting, passing audits, and record keeping requirements. This set of compliance requirements is unique and separate from the IRA but falling out of compliance on the Registered Apprenticeship Program means you are out of IRA compliance.

We’ve developed a full list of Sponsor duties here.

It takes 9+ months on average for a state to register a new apprenticeship program on your own. You can view data that’s been collected to show you the difference in timelines by OA and SAA states.

The key to staying IRA compliant with a registered apprenticeship program, is to make sure you’re meeting the DoL’s requirements and passing audits. Apprentix helps you do this whether you’re managing compliance on your own or asking us to manage it for you.

No, Apprentix is not a training provider so you will need to handle classroom and on-the-job training. If you are using our Fractional Sponsor service, we will design the classroom curriculum for you and we’ll utilize as much as you can deliver in-house with your existing training process. Same with the on-the-job training, we’ll understand how you work and then we’ll align that with our program standards. If you have any training gaps and need to fill them, we’ll identify training providers for you and you’ll contract them directly.

You are responsible for the classroom curriculum so you’ll either deliver the training using in-house resources or through a 3rd party, or a combination of both.

If you use subs who will trigger the IRA’s apprenticeship requirement, you can either put them under your program with Apprentix’s Fractional Sponsor and their apprentice count will count towards your total apprentices and you can put them onto your tech platform for tracking purposes. Alternatively, you can tell subs that they need to use Apprentix on their own and make a direct relationship.