Data sources and methodology

731,804 records across 50 states and Washington, DC. These are the records behind the state and DOT region pages; the totals match the home page.

Latest collection finished November 13, 2026.

Every record comes from a public procurement record or an official open-data source.

• Federal transportation awards
  USAspending.gov · Federal

  Contract and grant awards from the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Railroad Administration, grouped by the state where the work is performed.

• State DOT project and letting data
  State departments of transportation · State

  Project, letting and advertising schedules that about two dozen state DOTs publish through open-data portals, project maps and downloadable spreadsheets, plus statewide contract registers where a state publishes one.

• County highway contracts
  Cook County, Illinois · Local

  Highway Department procurement contracts from the county's open-data catalog.

• TxDOT bid tabulations
  Texas Department of Transportation · State

  Published letting results (every bid and the winning bidder), used for the bidder activity panel on the Enterprise plan. Loaded by hand periodically rather than collected automatically.

• Cook County bid tabulations
  Cook County, Illinois · Local

  County bid results (every bid and the winning bidder) from the county's open-data catalog, used for the bidder activity panel on the Enterprise plan. Loaded by hand periodically rather than collected automatically.

• Buyer. The agency, district or city the source names as the buyer, matched to one page per buyer.
• End date. The source's own end, expiration or completion date. Some sources publish an estimate or a forecast rather than a fixed date. Where a source gives only a year, we record 31 December of that year. Dates more than 25 years away are dropped as likely data-entry errors. We never add an end date the source does not give.
• Value. The amount the source reports. Some sources report a total amount that can cover several years rather than a yearly figure. Public pages show values rounded.
• Vendor. The vendor or service provider the source names. Names are grouped only when they are spelled the same, so one firm can appear under more than one name.
• Category. Taken from the source's own type field or from keywords in the title.
• Confidence. How complete a record's key fields are under that source's rules: high, medium or low. It is not a guarantee that a contract is active or that its end date is right.

• Direct contract. An agreement between the buyer and a vendor.
• Cooperative or master contract. A contract other public buyers can purchase from without running their own procurement.
• Payment record. Spending reported under a contract. It shows who a buyer pays, but not the contract's terms or end date.
• Upcoming solicitation. Work the buyer plans to put out to bid. There is no vendor yet.

Each source is collected on its own schedule, set by how often its publisher updates it, except where its description above says it is loaded by hand. The counts on this site are rebuilt from the stored records every hour.

• DOT region pages: how many contracts are tracked, how many end in the next 6, 12 and 18 months, the next end date, the work mix by category, the vendors that hold the most contracts, and a sample of contracts showing category, approximate value and, where recorded, end month.
• State pages: contract counts, the category mix and every DOT region with contracts, ranked by contracts tracked, 500 per page.
• Category pages: contracts ending soon (title, buyer and end date) and, where a source publishes them, upcoming solicitations with estimated values and past awards, with a value once a contract has ended. Vendor names are shown in aggregate rankings; in public contract titles the contract's own vendor is masked.
• Paid plans: the vendor, dollar value and source record behind a contract (where the public record has them) from 18 months before it ends, plus email alerts as contracts enter that window.

• Some records have no end date because the source does not publish one. They count toward the totals but never appear in the ending-soon windows.
• Coverage follows what each publisher releases. A state with few records usually means its agencies publish little open contract data, not that little work happens there.
• When a source changes its format or goes offline, its records stay as they were last collected until it can be collected again, so some records can be out of date.
• Contract titles are the source's own wording. Public pages mask the contract's own vendor in titles.
• Some state DOT feeds publish one row per project phase, work item or contract line, so one project can appear several times and record counts overstate the number of distinct projects.
• Federal awards from USAspending.gov often have no end date, and their values are total award amounts that can cover several years and many projects, not yearly figures.

If a record looks wrong or out of date, email us with a link to the page and we will check it against the source.