Every general contractor I talk to in the US has the same complaint: the work is out there, but it is spread across dozens of portals, and finding it eats the hours that should go into pricing it. This is the map I wish every new estimator had.
Where are federal construction bids posted?
Federal construction opportunities are posted on SAM.gov under Contract Opportunities. To bid, a company needs an active SAM registration and a Unique Entity ID (UEI). Filter the search by NAICS code:
| NAICS | Covers |
|---|---|
| 236220 | Commercial and institutional building construction |
| 237310 | Highway, street and bridge construction |
| 237110 | Water and sewer line construction |
| 238 (6-digit codes) | Specialty trades such as electrical (238210) and plumbing and HVAC (238220) |
Many federal postings are set aside for small business, 8(a), HUBZone or service-disabled veteran-owned firms, so filter by the set-asides your company qualifies for. Federal construction contracts over $150,000 also require performance and payment bonds under the Miller Act (FAR 28.102).
Where are state and local construction bids posted?
This is where most public work lives, and where it is most scattered:
- State procurement portals and state DOT letting pages (for example, TxDOT lettings in Texas).
- City and county purchasing pages. Travis County, TX and the City of Austin each post their own solicitations.
- School districts, community colleges and universities. Most run their own bid pages or a hosted e-bidding platform.
- Utilities, transit authorities, airports and ports. These often use separate vendor portals with their own registration.
A mid-size general contractor bidding across one state can easily end up watching dozens of separate portals, each with its own login, notification settings and document format.
What about private work and GC invitations?
Private projects rarely appear on public portals. They come through invitations to bid (ITBs) from owners and general contractors, plan rooms run by AGC and ABC chapters, and commercial lead services. For subcontractors, getting onto the bid lists of the general contractors active in your market is usually more productive than watching public portals alone.
How do you keep up without missing a due date?
- Write down your bid profile first: trades, regions, project size range, delivery methods (hard bid, CMAR, design-build) and bonding capacity. Every search and alert should follow from it.
- Save searches by NAICS code and region on every portal that supports alerts, and check them daily.
- Track every opportunity in one place with its due date, pre-bid meeting, bond requirement and addenda.
- Decide Go or No-Go early. Reading a full bid package before deciding is where most hours disappear. A short Go/No-Go checklist saves the estimating team for the work you can actually win.
- Read past bid tabulations. Award results show who wins similar work for that agency and at what number.
How does Clara help?
Clara, BAU AI's agent for bids and RFPs, scans 1,000+ public bid portals for projects that match your company profile, reads each package end to end, flags bonds, liquidated damages, insurance, prevailing wage and DBE goals with the page cited, and drafts the Go/No-Go memo. Your team makes the call. Clara does not cover every portal in the US, and she does not submit bids for you.
Illustrative example: on the savings calculator at bauai.co, a team of 8 that spends 15 hours a week each finding and reading bids at a $75 loaded rate costs about $36,000 a month. At the calculator's illustrative 85% reduction, about $30,600 of that time comes back each month. These rates are illustrative and not yet validated with US data.
If you want to see how Clara would watch these portals for your company, join our US founding cohort and we will run her on your own bid profile.
Tushar Adsul, Founder and CEO, BAU AI
Frequently asked questions
Is SAM.gov free to use? Yes. Searching opportunities and registering an entity on SAM.gov are free. Be careful with third-party services that charge for SAM registration.
What NAICS code do general contractors use? Commercial general contractors most often use 236220 (commercial and institutional building construction). Heavy civil work uses codes under 237, and specialty trades use 6-digit codes under 238.
How long are public bid windows? It varies by agency and project size. Many local solicitations allow two to four weeks between posting and bid opening, which is why daily monitoring matters.
Sources
- SAM.gov, Contract Opportunities and entity registration.
- Federal Acquisition Regulation 28.102, bonds for construction contracts (Miller Act).
- U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS 2022 definitions for sectors 236, 237 and 238.