Three hour-based triggers set a crew's meal breaks and overtime: a meal window, a five-hour cap, and overtime thresholds.
If you price a crew by the hour, the base rate is usually the easy part. The harder question is which hours cost more, and which hours include a break that changes how long the crew is on site. Get those three right and most of the labor math follows. Miss one, and the crew will run over budget even when every hour was estimated correctly.
Key takeaways
- Washington's meal must start no less than two and no more than five hours after the shift start, and last at least thirty minutes.
- Washington allows no more than five consecutive hours of work without a meal period.
- Washington's long-day rule requires at least one thirty-minute meal period when a day runs three or more hours past a normal workday.
- Oregon requires overtime pay of 1.5 times the hourly rate for hours over 40 in a workweek, for private sector employees.
- Check the rule for the state where the crew works before you price the job.
This post walks through the three triggers in the order you would run them on a real estimate. Each one comes from a published state labor source. The first two come from Washington's meal and rest period rule. The third comes from Washington's long-day rule or from Oregon's weekly overtime rule, depending on where the crew works. The two states write their rules differently, so treat each trigger as one state's rule.
1. Find the meal window from the shift start
Start every break calculation with the shift start. Washington's rule says employees "shall be allowed a meal period of at least thirty minutes which commences no less than two hours nor more than five hours from the beginning of the shift" ( WAC 296-126-092). Read that as two numbers you can place on a schedule. The earliest the meal can begin is two hours after the start. The latest is five hours after it.
For estimating, think of this as a window rather than a single time. Your schedule can put the break anywhere inside that span, and you can choose the spot that fits the work. A pour that must finish at a fixed point, or a delivery that arrives mid-morning, may pull the break earlier or later. It cannot move outside the window.
Put the shift start once, at the top of the crew sheet, and link every other calculation back to it. Many errors come from typing the start time in three places and getting one of them wrong. When the start moves, the window moves with it. A cell labeled "meal window opens" with a formula pointing to the start is far safer than a typed-in clock time.
Test the window by walking the day forward. Write the start, add two hours, add five hours, and look at what the crew is doing inside that span. If the crew is on a roof, in a trench, or on a truck for the whole stretch, the meal needs a stopping point that exists. That might be a site trailer, a shift change, or a natural pause in the sequence. A window on paper only helps if the job has a place to stop.
If the window closes and no stop exists, you have two real options. You can move a task so that a pause falls inside the span. You can split a long task so the crew stops at a clean break point. What you cannot do is assume the crew will simply find a pause. Someone has to plan it.
Two details are easy to miss. The first is that the thirty-minute minimum is part of the trigger. A lunch shorter than thirty minutes fails the rule even if it starts at the right time. The second is that each worker has their own window. A crew with staggered starts needs a separate window for each start time. If one worker begins an hour after the others, a single lunch may fit one window and miss the other. Your sheet should show that before the crew does.
Is the meal period paid? That is a separate question from timing and length. For that question, see unpaid meal breaks. Check the state rule before you assign a wage to the break. Then record the answer on the sheet so the next estimator does not have to guess.
2. Respect the five-hour cap
The second trigger is a limit on how long a crew can work straight. Washington's rule says "No employee shall be required to work more than five consecutive hours without a meal period." Put it beside the first trigger, and the two work as a pair. The window says when the meal can start. The cap says when it must happen at the latest.
Take a long day with a fixed start. The window opens two hours in. The cap says the crew cannot be held past five hours of work before the meal. If the meal starts four hours in, the schedule satisfies both rules. If it slips to five and a half hours in, the crew has already crossed the cap, even though the meal eventually happens.
The cap is the trigger that tends to fail on a job site. Schedules drift. An inspection runs long, a truck arrives late, and the crew keeps working through a gap because the next task is already set up. Each small slip pushes the meal later, and the line gets crossed without anyone deciding to cross it. When you build the bid, place the meal at a fixed point and leave a margin before the cap rather than planning to hit it exactly. A bid that assumes perfect timing will show a cost problem on the first rainy morning.
One practical habit helps a lot. Add a running hours column to the sheet that resets to zero at each meal. Anyone reading the sheet can then see, at a glance, how long the crew has been working since its last break. The column turns a rule you have to remember into a number you can check.
Rest periods use a different measure, and an estimator needs both. The same rule allows a substitute. Where the nature of the work allows employees to take "intermittent rest periods equivalent to ten minutes for each 4 hours worked, scheduled rest periods are not required." A crew whose work already includes frequent short pauses may not need a separate scheduled rest, but only if the work truly allows those pauses. A crew that cannot pause that way has no basis in this rule for skipping the scheduled rest, so the estimate should carry one. For the cost of those rests in crew hours, see paid rest and overtime costs.
Write down why you chose either way. A sheet that shows the reasoning is much easier to defend later than one that just leaves the rest line blank.
When a scheduled rest is needed, the rule says "Rest periods shall be scheduled as near as possible to the midpoint of the work period." For a steady crew, that puts the rest near the middle of the shift, not at the start or the end. Calculate the midpoint on the sheet, place the rest there, and check that it does not collide with the meal window or push the meal past the cap. A rest near the middle and a meal near the cap leave very little room between them. Move one of them earlier and note the reason.
Illustrative example: one shift
Suppose a shift starts at 6 a.m. Plan the meal for 9 a.m., which sits inside the window and leaves two hours before the cap. Record the start, the window and the cap as linked cells, so a change to the start moves all three.
3. Count overtime on two separate clocks
Overtime has two thresholds in these sources, and they answer different questions. One looks at the length of a single day. The other looks at total hours in a week. Keep them in different columns of your sheet so neither gets mixed into the other. For more on daily and weekly rules, see daily or weekly overtime.
The day trigger comes from Washington. Its rule says "Employees working three or more hours longer than a normal work day shall be allowed at least one thirty-minute meal period prior to or during the overtime period." Start by setting the normal workday in your bid. Then find the long-day line by adding three hours to it.
Say your normal workday is eight hours. The long-day line sits three hours above that. That figure comes from your bid and the crew's usual schedule. Write it down, because the trigger means nothing until you have it.
Long days are often weather days or catch-up days, and those are the days that tend to reach the line unnoticed. Decide before the day starts whether the crew will be held over. A decision made at the end of the shift usually comes too late to plan the meal, and the cost shows up as a surprise on the next invoice.
The weekly trigger comes from Oregon. The Bureau of Labor and Industries puts it this way: "The required overtime pay is 1.5 times the hourly rate for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek." The same guidance defines the workweek as "a regularly recurring period of seven consecutive 24-hour periods."
That definition is what makes the weekly trigger usable. The workweek is not a loose idea of "the week." It is a recurring block of time with a fixed length. Pick one start for each job and count every hour from that start. Switching start days partway through is the fastest way to count the same hours twice or to miss them entirely.
The table here puts the thresholds side by side, so you can check which rule governs each column of your sheet.
Now apply the weekly trigger to a worked case. Suppose a private employer in Oregon has a crew member log more than 40 hours in one workweek. The first 40 hours are paid at the regular hourly rate. Every hour beyond 40 is paid at 1.5 times that rate. To price the week, multiply the regular rate by the first 40 hours, multiply the extra hours by 1.5 times the rate, and add the two results.
The 40-hour line and the 1.5 multiplier are Oregon's figures. For a job in another state, look up that state's rule before you reuse them. Substitute the crew's actual rate and hours. The structure of the calculation carries over to any bid, even when the numbers do not.
Its rules appear in the Wisconsin Hours of Work and Overtime Law (formerly named ERD-8298-P), published by the state Department of Workforce Development at dwd.wisconsin.gov. If a crew works there, read that document before you copy either the Washington or the Oregon thresholds into your sheet. States can differ on meals, rest periods, and overtime, and a sheet built on the wrong state's rule will look correct right up until someone checks it.
Price weekly overtime from the total hours above 40 in the workweek. Apply only the meal and overtime rules of the state where the crew works. If a long day also pushes the week past 40 hours, the weekly column already captures those extra hours. Do not add them to the day column too. That double count is one of the most common ways a labor estimate drifts upward.
4. Build the crew sheet in the order the work happens
With the three triggers in hand, the crew sheet almost builds itself. A wrong start time then shows up immediately in every row that depends on it, which is much easier to catch than a wrong number buried in the middle of a spreadsheet.
Here is the order to use.
Begin with the shift start for each person or group, because everything else hangs from it. Then build the meal window, which runs from two hours after that start through five hours after it. Add the five-hour cap next, and place the planned meal before it with a margin. Add the scheduled rest at the midpoint of the work period, unless the work allows intermittent rests that meet the measure of ten minutes for each 4 hours worked. Check that the rest and the meal do not crowd each other.
Next, set the normal workday for the bid and add three hours to find the long-day line. Flag any day that reaches or runs past it and add the thirty-minute meal period for that day. Then total the hours for each workweek, using the one fixed start you chose. Count the hours above 40 in the Oregon case and pay them at 1.5 times the rate. For a job in another state, look up that state's overtime rule before you apply the Oregon threshold.
Finally, keep a short note beside each assumption. Record the normal workday you chose, the workweek start day, whether the meal period is paid, and the state whose rule you used. Those four notes answer most of the questions a reviewer will ask later. They also make the bid easy to update when the schedule changes.
Before you send the bid, read the sheet from top to bottom as if you were the person who has to follow it. Confirm that each start time matches the crew's actual plan. Confirm that each meal falls inside its window and ahead of its cap. Confirm that no hour appears in both the day column and the week column. A short review like this catches most of the errors that would otherwise show up as overruns in the field. Ask a second estimator to read it if you can. A fresh reader will spot the assumption you stopped questioning a long time ago.
A bid is only useful if someone else can follow it after you have moved on to the next job. A sheet that explains its own assumptions does that work for you.
The meal window tells you when a break can happen. The five-hour cap tells you when it must happen. Work through them in that order, write down your assumptions as you go, and your crew costs will look much more like what the crew actually works.
Next step today: open your crew sheet, type each shift start into one cell, and link the meal window and five-hour cap to it.
Related guides: Crew labor burden: 3 Minnesota and Maryland payroll rules.
Frequently asked questions
How long must a Washington meal period last?
A Washington meal period must last at least thirty minutes and start no less than two hours and no more than five hours after the shift begins.
How long can a crew work before a meal in Washington?
A Washington crew member cannot be required to work more than five consecutive hours without a meal period.
When does Oregon overtime apply?
For private sector employees, hours over 40 in a workweek are paid at 1.5 times the hourly rate.
Can one state's rules be used for every job?
No. Use the rules of the state where each crew works and treat each trigger as one state's rule.
This post is planning background, not legal or tax advice.