Methodology

Where the bids come from

BidRanger reads SAM.gov (federal), state Departments of Transportation, BidNet Direct, Public Purchase, BidLocker, Bonfire, SciQuest / Jaggaer, CivicPlus, and hundreds of city, county, and special-district portals. Each source is a public procurement site that publishes its solicitations openly; BidRanger collects the listing, not the bid documents. Plans and specifications stay on the issuing agency's portal, and every BidRanger listing links to that original posting so anything shown here can be checked at the source.

BidRanger is an independent aggregator. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated on behalf of any government agency or procurement portal.

How often the data refreshes

Sources are re-read every 24 hours. A bid posted by an agency appears on BidRanger after the next read of that source, and the daily 7am Eastern email digest sends subscribers only the bids new since the previous digest that match their saved states, categories, and keywords.

If a source changes its site and a read fails, that source's bids are neither updated nor removed until the read succeeds again; the health check that watches for this is described on the About page.

What "open" means, and when a bid is removed

A bid is open until the due date published by the agency passes. It stays visible as closed for 30 days after that date and is then deleted. BidRanger is therefore a feed of current and recently closed solicitations, not an archive of past awards.

Trade classification

Trade classification runs for Wyoming plus every state with an active subscriber. Bids in other states are collected and searchable but show "Pending" for trade and project type until a subscriber for that state appears, at which point classification starts automatically.

Classification is produced by an AI model reading the bid's title and description. It is a label to help filtering, not a statement by the agency; the original posting is authoritative.

How the state statistics are counted

The public construction bid statistics page counts, for each state, the distinct open bids and the distinct issuing agencies in the live database. A state is published only when it has at least 20 open bids from at least 3 agencies; below that floor the state shows no figure rather than a misleading one. The same figures are available as a CSV on that page.

How trade pages count

A trade page such as the paving bids page counts a bid by its title, using the same rule in every state. The AI trade classifier is used only to leave out bids it marked supply-only; it never adds a bid to the count. Work buried inside a generic title ("Highway Improvement") is not counted, so each figure is a floor.

Before a count appears in a page title, 100 counted bids are drawn at random and read one by one. The page publishes its count only if at least 90% of that sample is the trade in question. For paving, 95 of 100 bids checked on 2026-09-22 were paving work (95%); the misses are excluded by name.

What BidRanger is not

BidRanger is a public-construction-bid alert service for contractors. It is not an auction site and has no connection to RangerBid, BidWrangler, or any equipment or vehicle auction platform.

It does not cover private or planning-stage projects, does not host bid documents, and does not submit bids on your behalf. It shows you the public solicitation and where to get it.

Corrections

If a listing, count, or statement on this site is wrong, email rory@bidrangerai.com. Rory Watson, who built and runs BidRanger, reads every message and corrects the data or the rule. This page was last reviewed on 2026-09-22.