The average low bid on the board is still landing 31.7% above the engineer's estimate — unchanged from yesterday's read and the same number this desk flagged earlier this cycle. Whatever has been pushing prices up, it isn't easing.
Average bidder turnout actually dropped a touch, from 9.4 firms per job to 9.1, while the average dollar spread between bidders widened slightly, from about $7.78 million to about $7.36 million lower than the prior read — both numbers moving on the same 1,000-result sample, so the shift is modest, not a trend reversal.
“A full day went by, 1,000 results stayed the pool, and the estimate gap didn't move a tenth of a point.”
Put plainly: fewer firms are showing up per job, on average, and when they do show up they're still pricing jobs nearly a third higher than what the agency engineer wrote down ahead of the bid. That combination — thinner competition, bigger gaps to the estimate — is what a tight labor and materials market looks like on paper.
None of this is new information, which is itself the finding. A full day went by, 1,000 results stayed the pool, and the estimate gap didn't move a tenth of a point. That's not noise settling out — that's a market that has found its level and is staying there.
What this means for you: If you're writing an estimate off an agency's published budget number, add roughly 30% before you even start pricing labor and material risk — that's where the market is actually clearing. How we count: Based on the most recent 1,000 recorded bid results on the board, comparing each job's low bid to the agency's published engineer's estimate; the percentage is an average across all 1,000, not a single job.