General vs. Specialty Contractor Rules in South Dakota

There is no general class, so there is nothing to be a specialty of

In states with a contractor board, the general-versus-specialty question is answered by a classification on a licence: what you may build and what you must sub out. South Dakota has no such board and no such licence. The Department of Labor and Regulation’s index of professional and occupational boards names the Electrical Commission and the Plumbing Commission and no contractor board, so there is no state classification to sit inside.

What South Dakota licenses is trades, and it licenses them by category rather than by tier. The Plumbing Commission alone issues plumbing contractor, plumber and third-year apprentice plumber licences, sewer and water contractor and installer, appliance contractor, installer and apprentice, individual and small on-site wastewater system installer, manufactured and mobile home contractor and installer, underground irrigation contractor and installer, water conditioning contractor and installer, and apprentice licences in every category. Those are scope boundaries, and they are enforced by category rather than by size of job.

For everything outside electrical and plumbing, your scope in South Dakota is defined by your contract, the building code, the local permit and inspection process and your insurer, not by a state classification. That is more freedom and less protection than a classified state gives you, and it puts the whole burden of matching capability to scope on your own judgement.

Official sources: South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation: Boards and Commissions; South Dakota Plumbing Commission: Licensing

What South Dakota does license: electrical and plumbing, each by its own commission

Electrical is the clearest case, and the statute is unusually blunt about it. SDCL 36-16-1 requires any person, firm, partnership, limited liability company or corporation "engaged, or offering to engage, in business as an electrical contractor" or performing the work defined in the chapter to obtain a licence from the State Electrical Commission before undertaking the work, and states that it "is a Class 2 misdemeanor" to engage in that business or work otherwise. SDCL 36-16-34 repeats the misdemeanor grading for failing to register, obtain a licence, or report wiring.

The contracting right is narrower than the licence list suggests. SDCL 36-16-14 provides that "No contract, agreement, or understanding with another for the installation of electrical wiring or the installation of electrical parts of other apparatus shall be entered into by anyone not an electrical contractor," and confines a Class B electrician’s contracting authority to farm and residential electrical wiring and the related equipment and appliances. A general builder cannot take the electrical scope into their own contract and sub it out to a journeyman.

The ladder and the money are both statutory. SDCL 36-16-2 defines a journeyman electrician as having at least four years of experience and a Class B electrician as having at least thirty-six months. SDCL 36-16-19 requires "at least two years of experience as a journeyman electrician or at least one year of commercial experience as a Class B electrician before making application for an electrical contractor’s license." SDCL 36-16-20 requires a $10,000 undertaking plus public liability insurance of not less than $100,000 per occurrence and $300,000 aggregate, and a $50 deposit to a special fund at execution and at each biennial renewal. SDCL 36-16-17 caps biennial fees at $200 for an electrical contractor, $80 for a journeyman and $200 for a Class B electrician. SDCL 36-16-25 sets a two-year term expiring at midnight on June 30 of each even-numbered year, with a thirty-day renewal window after expiry. The Electrical Commission adds that licensees need 16 hours of continuing education, a minimum of 8 of them code hours, by renewal or by June 30, whichever is sooner.

The exemptions are worth knowing before you assume you are caught. SDCL 36-16-15 requires no licence of a person installing electric wiring in or on their own residence, their own farmstead, a single-family dwelling under construction that they own and intend to occupy, or private non-habitable property they own "that is not substantially used in connection with a trade or business." Even then, entrance installations over sixty amperes, circuits and electrical parts of other apparatus are subject to inspection and an inspection fee, and "Failure to report this work as required by law is a Class 2 misdemeanor." SDCL 36-16-16 separately exempts utility employees up to the first point of service attachment and employees of telephone, telegraph, radio, television and pipeline services where the work is designed, supervised or installed by a qualified person. SDCL 36-16-25 also disapplies the chapter to emergency repairs to farmstead and residential wiring.

Plumbing is licensed by the South Dakota Plumbing Commission, and we describe it in the Commission’s own terms rather than the statute’s, because we could not read SDCL chapter 36-25 itself. The Commission licenses plumbing contractors, plumbers and third-year apprentices, sewer and water contractors and installers, appliance contractors and installers, on-site wastewater system installers, manufactured and mobile home contractors and installers, underground irrigation contractors and installers, water conditioning contractors and installers, and apprentices in every category. It states that a plumbing contractor needs "six years’ experience as a plumbing contractor, plumber, or plumber’s apprentice with at least two of those years as a plumbing contractor or plumber," and a plumber needs "four years’ experience as an apprentice plumber." It states the governing law as SDCL 36-25 with rules in ARSD 20:53 and the plumbing code in ARSD 20:54, and requires a plumbing inspection certificate for all plumbing installations.

Finally, none of the above is the whole answer for the town you are standing in. SDCL 36-16-35 preserves the right of "any municipality, rural electric cooperative, private utility, or political subdivision of the state from making and enforcing more stringent requirements than those set forth in this chapter, and such requirements shall be complied with." We publish no municipal fee, bond, threshold or renewal cycle anywhere on this site; ask the jurisdiction covering the project address.

Official sources: South Dakota Electrical Commission Wiring Bulletin, reproducing SDCL chapter 36-16 and ARSD article 20:44; South Dakota Electrical Commission: Licensing; South Dakota Plumbing Commission: Licensing; South Dakota Plumbing Commission: South Dakota Laws and Rules

The one South Dakota scope rule that limits who may sign

Most trade licensing restricts who may do the work. SDCL 36-16-14 goes further and restricts who may enter the contract: "No contract, agreement, or understanding with another for the installation of electrical wiring or the installation of electrical parts of other apparatus shall be entered into by anyone not an electrical contractor."

The exception is narrow and named. A Class B electrician may enter into such a contract, but that authority "is limited to the installation of farm electrical wiring, residential electrical wiring, the installation of electrical equipment, appliances and apparatus, in relation to said farm and residential wiring." No other licence class is given contracting authority in that sentence.

The practical consequence for a builder or remodeller is that you cannot treat the electrical scope as yours to sell and then sub out. The customer’s electrical contract has to be with an electrical contractor, or with a Class B electrician inside the farm and residential limits. Structuring a job so that the electrical work sits inside your own contract with the owner is the exact arrangement SDCL 36-16-14 addresses.

The experience behind those licences is not trivial. SDCL 36-16-2 defines a journeyman electrician as having at least four years of experience and a Class B electrician as having at least thirty-six months, and SDCL 36-16-19 requires "at least two years of experience as a journeyman electrician or at least one year of commercial experience as a Class B electrician before making application for an electrical contractor’s license."

Official sources: South Dakota Electrical Commission Wiring Bulletin, reproducing SDCL chapter 36-16 and ARSD article 20:44

How to check a subcontractor when there is no contractor register

Check the trade licence, not a contractor register, because there is not one. For electrical, confirm the class as well as the existence of the licence: an electrical contractor may contract for the work, a Class B electrician may contract only within farm and residential wiring, and a journeyman electrician is not given contracting authority by SDCL 36-16-14 at all. Confirm the expiry too, since SDCL 36-16-25 puts every licence on a two-year term expiring at midnight on June 30 of each even-numbered year regardless of when your own year runs.

For plumbing, confirm the category rather than assuming a plumbing licence covers adjacent work. The Commission licenses sewer and water, appliance, on-site wastewater, manufactured and mobile home, underground irrigation and water conditioning as separate categories from plumbing contractor and plumber. A licence in one is not authority in another.

For the business, the Secretary of State runs a filing search you can use to confirm the entity exists and is in good standing, and the Department of Revenue issues the contractor’s excise tax licence whose number a prime contractor has to put on every exemption certificate. If a subcontractor cannot give you an excise tax licence number, that is a real signal in South Dakota even though it is a tax registration rather than a trade credential.

And check local. SDCL 36-16-35 lets municipalities, rural electric cooperatives, private utilities and political subdivisions impose more stringent requirements than the state’s, "and such requirements shall be complied with." We publish no municipal requirement anywhere, so this is a question for the jurisdiction covering the project address.

Official sources: South Dakota Electrical Commission Wiring Bulletin, reproducing SDCL chapter 36-16 and ARSD article 20:44; South Dakota Plumbing Commission: Licensing; South Dakota Secretary of State: Business filing search; South Dakota Department of Revenue: Contractor’s Excise Tax

Check the official page yourself before you file or sign

One limitation applies to everything above and you should know it before you rely on a statute citation from any source about South Dakota. The Legislature’s own site, sdlegislature.gov, returns HTTP 200 with no statute text to anything but an interactive browser. We tried the statute path and five separate API paths on 2026-08-06 and every one returned a loading shell. A monitoring system that checks status codes reads that as a healthy source. It is not one, and it means summaries of South Dakota law circulating online may never have been checked against the code.

Because of that, every verbatim SDCL quotation here comes from the Department of Labor and Regulation’s own reproduction of chapter 36-16 in the Electrical Commission wiring bulletin, published on dlr.sd.gov. We publish no verbatim text of SDCL chapter 36-25 at all, because no agency reproduction of the plumbing chapter was available to us; every plumbing statement here is the Plumbing Commission’s own description, attributed as such.

Two further limits. We publish no municipal fee, bond, insurance minimum, dollar threshold or renewal cycle for any South Dakota city or county, and SDCL 36-16-35 specifically warns that local requirements can be stricter than the state’s. And we found no South Dakota provision barring an unlicensed contractor from suing to collect payment, which we record as something we did not find rather than as a conclusion, precisely because we could not search the full code.

Official sources: South Dakota Electrical Commission Wiring Bulletin, reproducing SDCL chapter 36-16 and ARSD article 20:44; South Dakota Plumbing Commission: South Dakota Laws and Rules; South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation: Boards and Commissions