How to read a bid record
Every SubPursuit record is read the same way, field by field. The sample record on the tour page is the teaching example; its fields are the fields on every live record.
- 🎯Stage. Read this first. The stage is the record's position in the project's public life, and the record is labeled only at the stage its documents support. A bidding stage record means the solicitation is published and the deadline is real.
- ⏰Bid deadline. The date and time the bid is due, carried on the record itself. When an addendum moves it, the record keeps both dates, so read the history before you trust the headline date.
- 🏗️Trade in scope. The trades or categories the published documents put in play. This is the field your saved search matches against, and the field to check when a record looks close but not quite yours.
- 📄Documents. What the owner published: the solicitation and, where they are part of the posting, the specifications. The record points to the documents; it never republishes them.
- 📋Planholders. Where the public posting names them, the firms that took out plans, and later the bidders and the awarded contractor. Where the posting does not publish them, the record says so by leaving the field to its rule, not by guessing.
- 📍Source. The public document the record came from, named in full on a live record with its posting date. This is the field that makes the record checkable: you can go to the same document yourself.
- 🕘Stage history. The dated events of the record's life: the merge, the publication, each addendum. Read it last and read it always, because it is where deadline moves and document changes live.
The habit to build is simple: stage, deadline, scope, source, history. Five fields, in that order, before a record goes on a pursuit list.
What bidding stage means, and what it does not
What it means
- 📄A public owner has published a solicitation for the project, and the bid documents are public.
- ⏰A bid deadline is fixed and stated, and the window to act is open.
- 🏗️The work in scope is described in published documents, so a subcontractor can price from the documents rather than from a summary.
- 🔁Changes arrive as addenda, in public, and the record tracks them as dated events.
What it does not mean
- 🚫It does not mean planning stage. A project whose documents are not yet published is not a bidding stage record, and the pilot feed does not present it as one.
- 🚫It does not mean private work. Private projects that never touch a public posting are outside the pilot feed's sources.
- 🚫It does not mean awarded. Bidding stage is before the award; who won is a later event on the record, where the public record publishes it.
- 🚫It does not mean a fit. The stage says where the project stands, not whether it belongs on your list; fit is the saved search and the score, and the score shows its reasons.
The label is a promise about evidence: a record is called bidding stage only when a published solicitation supports the label. That discipline is why the feed can be checked, and why its earlier stage contents wait for a lawful source instead of being implied.
How a count is verified
The published count is the feed's license to sell an area, so it is built like an audit rather than like an advertisement. In reader form, the count is earned in five moves.
- 🎯Scope first. The count names its metro or category, its stage, and its period before a single record is tallied. Nothing outside that scope is folded in to make the number larger.
- 🗂️Duplicates merged. The same project reported by a permit filing and a procurement posting is one project. Merging happens before counting, never after.
- ✔️Records checked. Only records checked against their source document are counted. An unchecked record may sit in the working file, but it is not a countable record.
- 📅Published before opening. The count for an area is published before the area opens for sale, so a subscriber can weigh it before paying anything.
- 🔁Republished on the same basis. Every period after opening, the count is computed the same way and published again, so movement in the number is movement in the records, not in the arithmetic.
And the gate behind all five moves: if the verified count is thin, the area does not open. The full counting rules, the verification read, and the lawful use rule stand on the method page.
