Construction leads: how to find commercial projects in public permits, bids and plats

This guide is for construction companies looking for commercial work: general contractors, subcontractors, specialty trades, material suppliers and equipment rental firms. It covers lead generation for construction companies from public data: when each public record appears in a project's life, where to find federal, state and local bids, how to use building permits and plats, what paid construction lead services add, and a worked example. If you sell products or services to contractors rather than build, our list of construction companies is the better guide.

Where commercial construction leads come from

Every commercial project leaves a trail of public records. The earlier you find it, the more say you have in who builds it.

General contractors want the first three stages. Subcontractors and suppliers usually get in at the bidding stage through a general contractor, and an issued permit tells them which contractor to call.

How much construction work there is

The Census Bureau's construction spending survey estimated spending in August 2026 at these seasonally adjusted annual rates:

Spending for the first eight months of 2026 was 3.1% below the same period of 2025, which makes finding projects early more valuable, not less.

Federal bids on SAM.gov

Federal construction is public by design. Under the Federal Acquisition Regulation, contracting officers must post a notice on SAM.gov for proposed contracts expected to exceed $25,000, and construction notices and solicitations must state the project's size as a price range, never the government's estimate:

That range is a free qualification filter: search SAM.gov by your NAICS code, state and range, and you'll only see projects you can bond and staff. Construction contracts over $150,000 need performance and payment bonds under the Miller Act, so check your bonding capacity first.

Federal agencies obligated about $51 billion on construction contracts (NAICS sector 23) in fiscal 2025, according to USAspending.gov. Commercial and institutional building construction (236220) was $30.6 billion of it and other heavy and civil engineering (237990) $10.3 billion. By agency:

You need an active SAM.gov registration to bid. Our guide to selling to the government covers registration, set-asides and how to read past awards on USAspending.gov.

State and local bids

Most public construction is state and local: highways, schools, water and sewer, and city buildings. Each government posts its own bids:

• State procurement portals. For example, Texas posts state agency bids on the Electronic State Business Daily.
• State transportation departments. Highway and bridge work is let through each DOT's own bid schedule.
• Cities, counties, school districts and special districts. Large ones run bid portals; smaller ones post on their websites or in the local newspaper's legal notices.
• Bond elections. A school or city bond that voters approve is a list of future projects, often years before the first bid.

There are 91,729 local governments in the US, so pick the ones in your area and check them on a schedule. Our list of government agencies explains where to download them all.

Building permits

An issued permit tells you the address, the type of work, often the value, and the contractor. Many large cities publish permits as open data that you can filter and download. The Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey is national but counts only new residential units, so for commercial projects use city data.

Two cautions. First, the issued permit comes late: in Austin's data, commercial new-construction permits with a reported value of $1 million or more were issued a median 299 days after the application. Second, values are inconsistent: some cities copy a whole project's value onto every permit within it. Use permits to find the general contractor and the project, not to total up a market.

Plats and zoning cases

The earliest public records are land records. Before a commercial site can be built on, it may need rezoning, a plat (the recorded map that divides land into lots) and a site plan. These go through the city or county planning department and often a public planning commission hearing, with the agenda and application posted in advance. Each one names the owner or developer and usually the engineer, which gives a general contractor time to build a relationship before the design is finished.

What paid construction lead services add

Paid services such as Dodge Construction Network and ConstructConnect sell searchable databases of construction projects compiled from many sources. Much of what they compile starts as the public records above, so what you're mostly paying for is coverage and time saved. Before you subscribe:

1. Test your own area. Ask for a trial and compare their project list for your county with what you find in public records over the same month.
2. Check timing. Do projects appear at the planning stage, or only once bids or permits are out?
3. Check contacts. Are the general contractor, architect and owner named, with working contacts?
4. Price per won job. Divide the subscription cost by the jobs you'd realistically win from it.

Worked example: a glazing subcontractor in Austin

Illustrative example. The company and its plan are fictional; the permit figures come from the City of Austin's Issued Construction Permits dataset for October 2025 to September 2026.

The seller: Capitol Glass and Glazing (capitolglass.example), a 40-person commercial glazing subcontractor. The goal: get on more general contractors' bid lists for new commercial and multifamily projects.

What the data shows. Austin issued 1,071 commercial new-construction building permits in the 12 months. 391 of them, covering 82 projects, report a job value of $1 million or more, and those name 73 distinct general contractors (matched on the name as written). The median gap between application and issue for those permits was 299 days.

The plan.

1. List the 73 general contractors and find each one's estimating or preconstruction lead.
2. Watch earlier records. Track site plan applications and zoning cases on the planning commission agenda, so Capitol hears about projects before they're out to bid.
3. Add public bids. Set SAM.gov alerts for 236220 in Texas in the $1 million to $10 million ranges, and watch the state and local portals for school and city buildings.
4. Do the arithmetic. If Capitol gets onto the bid lists of an illustrative 25 of the 73 contractors and bids 40 projects a year, an illustrative 15% win rate gives 6 projects.

Finding the right estimator at 73 contractors, and what each is bidding now, is the slow part; Bebop finds the contacts at each company in a list and researches each one.

Subject: Glazing pricing for [project name or address]

Hi [first name],

I saw [contractor] pulled the permit for [project] at [address]. Congratulations on the job.

We're a commercial glazing subcontractor in [city], and we price storefront and curtain wall for projects from [size] to [size].

Could we be added to your bid list for glazing? If you're still buying out [project], I can turn a price around in [number] days.

[Your name]
[Phone number]

Self-check before you chase a lead

• You know the project stage and who controls the decision at that stage.
• The work fits your bonding capacity, licenses and crew size.
• You've read the bid documents, including the due date, bonding and insurance requirements.
• For public work, you're registered where required and meet any local preference or certification rules.
• You have a reference project of similar type and size.

Common mistakes

• Waiting for the permit. By then the general contractor has often picked most subcontractors.
• Ignoring planning records. Zoning cases and plats are free and come first.
• Bidding everything. Use the price range and scope to bid only what you can win and deliver.
• Trusting permit values. Use them to find projects and contractors, not to size a market.
• Paying for leads you could pull yourself. Test a paid service against public records for your own area first.

Next step: profile the general contractors you want to work with using the account profiling template: what they build, what they're bidding now, and who runs preconstruction.