Watch a public bid board long enough and you will start to believe it is the market. It is half of it. The other half moves through facilities platforms and corporate vendor programs, and those companies publish their own scale: ServiceChannel says more than 600 brands with 500,000 locations search its network for service providers. CBRE's provider network counts over 25,000 contractors serving more than 120,000 client locations. JLL's Corrigo platform claims a 70,000-provider network. NEST puts its independent-service-provider network at 26,000 firms. None of that work is advertised as a solicitation. It is dispatched.

What moves through this channel is the trade's bread and butter: break-fix repairs, recurring maintenance, storefront refreshes, rollout programs, and the small capital projects that keep a retail fleet, a branch network, or a gym chain running. A store reports a problem; a centralized facilities desk or work-order system triages it, sets a limit, and dispatches an approved contractor. The contractor who got qualified once gets dispatched again and again.

The direct doors are real, too, and they are open in public view. CVS runs a vendor page recruiting general contractors and repairs-and-maintenance firms for its nationwide retail fleet. Walgreens publishes application routes for design, construction, and maintenance partners. Dollar Tree's corporate site carries a published route for contractors who want to be considered for store-construction work — and notes that its GC consultants are prequalified. Macy's lists facilities and construction by name among its non-retail supplier opportunities.

One wrinkle decides where your letter should go: at franchise-heavy chains, the economic buyer is often not the brand at all. A gym or fast-food location may be owned by a regional franchise group whose own facilities lead — or its outsourced management company — controls the vendor list. The logo on the storefront is not the name on the purchase order.

Now the honest part, because these programs say it themselves: registration is not work. A supplier profile makes a firm visible to sourcing; it is not approval, not preferred status, and not a contract. Some portals are actively maintained and some are visibly dated. Treat every route as a door to knock on — not a queue that eventually calls your number.

Why this matters to a contractor pricing this market: the shop that only watches public boards is competing against everyone else watching the same board. The facilities channel rewards a different resume — occupied-site discipline, after-hours execution, clean closeout paperwork, and comfort working inside a client's work-order app with photos, check-ins, and electronic invoicing. Firms that already run public work at that standard are most of the way there.

What to do next: define the trades you genuinely self-perform and the territory you can honestly cover, get the insurance and safety package current, and start with the platforms — one qualification there can put a firm in front of dozens of client portfolios at once. The direct corporate programs come second, matched to the exact track that fits: construction, or repairs and maintenance, not both by reflex.

The RFP Wire will keep covering the half of the market that posts its work in public — 347 open solicitations on the board as of this week. This section exists for the other half: the jobs too small for the big papers and too real to ignore. This is where a lot of contractors actually make their money.