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.
13 of 47 articles for Foreman. Clear
All 74 topics
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.
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.
Buy out the material — a PO from the estimate to the lot
Build a purchase order from the estimate's material lines, issue it, receive the truck from the lot, and watch committed cost land on the budget the day the PO issues, not the day the invoice does.
Certified payroll — weekly cadence and DIR submission
When CPRs are due, what "work performed" means, and how STrOp builds the LCPtracker / eCPR export.
Daily site photos and the daily report
Capture the day while it's happening — the timecard's daily report (work completed, areas, site conditions, delays, deliveries, weather) and the photos, shot from the phone with a caption and a category — so when a claim or an audit asks what the site looked like on a Tuesday six months ago, you answer in thirty seconds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Work a warranty callback — log it, fix it, keep the lesson
Log a warranty item against the one-year clock, send someone out with a date and a bucket, close it with a root cause, and file the lesson where the next estimate will find it.
See STrOp in action
Single-pipeline operations for California specialty contractors — bid through warranty.
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