Which wage determination revision applies to your bid?

Not necessarily the one on SAM.gov today. The answer is set by federal rule, and it depends on your bid opening date.

The ten-day rule, in plain English

Under FAR 22.404-6, the Department of Labor modifies wage determinations throughout the year. A modification is effective for your project if it is published ten or more calendar days before bid opening. Published nine days before? It generally does not apply to that bid (with narrow agency-discretion exceptions). Published after bid opening? For sealed bids it generally does not change your contract (the exceptions are covered below), but the next revision cycle will hit your next bid.

Example: three revisions, a bid on April 1. Rev 2 landed only seven days before bid opening, inside the ten-day window, so rev 1 is the one that applies.

That means the binding document for your job is often a superseded revision that no longer appears as current anywhere on SAM.gov. If you only ever look at the current determination, two things go wrong: you cannot prove which rates you bid from, and you find out about increases at certified-payroll time instead of at pricing time.

Annual supersession makes it worse

Every year, each determination is superseded by a new decision number entirely (MN20250001 becomes MN20260001). Rate changes concentrate at these rollovers. The old number effectively disappears from casual view, taking your bid-time evidence with it.

“Doesn’t our payroll system handle prevailing wage?”

After award, yes. Certified payroll tools exist to pay whatever rates apply while the job runs and to file your WH-347s. None of them look backward at pricing: they will not tell an estimator that DOL revised the determination after the job was priced, whether the revision governs the bid under the ten-day rule, or what it does to the labor number. WagePin works the other side of the award line.

“The agency issues an addendum if rates change”

For sealed bids, usually, and the addendum tells you that the determination changed, not what changed inside it. Someone still has to open the new revision, find which of dozens of classifications moved, and re-price the work. WagePin’s diff is that step already done: old rate, new rate, and fringe, per classification.

And two common paths get no addendum at all. In negotiated procurement, modifications published any time before award apply. And if award slips more than 90 days past bid opening, modifications published before award become effective, under the same FAR clause. Both can move your rates after your number is locked.

What WagePin does about it

WagePin archives every revision of every active determination it covers, permanently. When you pin a project, we apply the ten-day rule to your bid date and record the exact revision that legally applied. Every night we check SAM.gov; if your determination changes in a way that actually moves rates (we ignore cosmetic reformatting), you get an email showing each classification's old rate, new rate, and fringe change, compared against your pinned revision, not just the previous one.

You can see your bid-date rates instantly from the home page, no email needed, and the rate pages are free to browse by state and county. Pinning and alerts are free while WagePin is early.

What the alert looks like

A real change from MN20260024, rendered the way it lands in your inbox. You only hear from us when rates actually move.

This page is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. The contracting officer's determination and the FAR govern; verify the official documents for anything contractual.