How to read a federal construction solicitation

Notice types: what stage is this?

SAM.gov notices follow a lifecycle, and reacting correctly to each stage is half the game:

• Sources sought / RFI — market research, not a bid. Responding (a capability statement and a short email) can shape whether the job becomes a set-aside and puts you on the agency's radar.
• Presolicitation — a heads-up that the solicitation is coming; start your teaming and site-logistics thinking now.
• Solicitation: IFB (Invitation for Bids) — sealed bidding; lowest responsive, responsible bidder wins. Most straightforward construction work runs this way.
• Solicitation: RFP (Request for Proposals) — negotiated procurement; price plus stated evaluation factors (past performance, technical approach). Expect to write, not just price.
• RFQ (Request for Quotations) — simplified acquisitions; faster, smaller, less paperwork.
• Amendments — every change to the package. You must acknowledge amendments in your bid or risk being thrown out as non-responsive.

Anatomy of the packet

A typical package: the solicitation form and clauses (often on SF 1442 for construction), the specifications organized by division, the drawing set, a wage determination, and a stack of attachments — geotech reports, hazmat surveys, phasing plans, bid schedules. The decisive details cluster in predictable places: bonding requirements in the clauses, liquidated damages and period of performance in the contract terms, site-visit and RFI dates in the cover instructions, and the magnitude range in the synopsis.

That predictability is why parsing works: JobsiteBids pulls bonds, prevailing-wage applicability, liquidated damages, licensing, insurance, and key dates out of each packet into structured fields, with anything the documents don't state left blank.

The wage determination (Davis-Bacon)

Federal construction contracts over $2,000 carry Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage requirements — which in practice means essentially every job you'd bid. The wage determination in the packet lists, by labor classification, the minimum hourly rate plus fringe benefits you must pay for site work; determinations come in four flavors (building, residential, highway, heavy) matching the work type.

Price labor off the wage determination, not your private-work rates — the fringe component surprises shops new to federal work. On contracts over $100,000, time-and-a-half over 40 hours is additionally mandated by the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act. Certified payroll reporting comes with the territory; build the administrative hour into your overhead.

A five-minute triage that actually works

Before committing estimator hours: confirm the set-aside (can you win it?), the magnitude (can you bond it? — see bonding explained), the dates (is the site visit still attendable, and is there runway to price it?), and the liquidated damages (can you live with the schedule risk?). Only then does the spec book earn a read.

And watch the amendments after you commit — a moved bid date or revised bid schedule arrives as an amendment, and acknowledging every one is mandatory.