Quick answer
Summary
Across **7,278 state-DOT public works projects with verified bidder rosters** in six states (TX, NJ, VA, WA, FL, NC), **38.8% received exactly one bid**. The rate varies enormously by state: **48.5% of Texas DOT records** in the sample were single-bid, versus **12.1% across the other five states combined** — from 5.8% (Florida DOT) to 21.6% (New Jersey DOT). These figures describe DOT-style lettings with published bidder counts, cumulative records as of June 30, 2026 — not all public construction (see the methodology before citing).
What is a single-bid rate?
The single-bid rate is the share of publicly bid projects that receive exactly one bid. It is the bluntest available measure of competition failure in public procurement: when only one contractor shows up, the agency loses the price discipline that sealed competitive bidding is designed to create, and the taxpayer usually pays for it. Agencies and legislatures watch this number; contractors should too, because a high single-bid rate marks agencies and work types where a well-prepared bidder faces little or no competition.
The headline numbers
| Scope | Projects with bidder counts | Single-bid projects | Single-bid rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| All six DOT sources | 7,278 | 2,826 | 38.8% |
| Texas DOT only | 5,349 | 2,593 | 48.5% |
| Five states excluding Texas | 1,929 | 233 | 12.1% |
Two honest readings of the same dataset:
- Nearly half of the Texas DOT records in our index drew a single bidder. Texas is also 73% of the roster-verified sample, so the blended 38.8% figure is heavily Texas-weighted.
- Outside Texas, single bidding is the exception, not the rule — about one project in eight.
We publish the per-source spread rather than only the blended average precisely because source mix drives the headline. Cite the scope with the number.
Single-bid rate by state DOT
| Source | Projects (total) | With verified bidder count | Single-bid | Single-bid rate | Bidder-count null rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas DOT (TxDOT) | 5,810 | 5,349 | 2,593 | 48.5% | 7.9% |
| New Jersey DOT (NJDOT) | 282 | 282 | 61 | 21.6% | 0% |
| Virginia DOT (VDOT) | 140 | 140 | 30 | 21.4% | 0% |
| Washington State DOT (WSDOT) | 981 | 981 | 107 | 10.9% | 0% |
| North Carolina DOT (NCDOT) | 128 | 128 | 12 | 9.4% | 0% |
| Florida DOT (FDOT) | 658 | 398 | 23 | 5.8% | 39.5% |
Read the Florida row with extra care: nearly 40% of FDOT records in our index are missing a bidder count, so its true rate could differ meaningfully from 5.8%. Every other included source has a complete or near-complete bidder-count roster.
Why single-bid projects matter
For agencies, a single bid removes the competitive check on price. Procurement research and state audit offices have repeatedly flagged single-bid contracts as a cost-control and, in some markets, a collusion-risk signal.
For contractors, the same number is an opportunity map. A 48.5% single-bid rate on Texas DOT records means that on roughly half of that work, the only thing standing between a qualified contractor and an award was showing up with a responsive bid. Single-bid-heavy agencies and work types are where bid-search coverage pays for itself — the projects competitors never saw are the ones they never bid.
For researchers and journalists, per-state single-bid rates computed from verified bidder rosters are rarely published in one place. This page and the downloadable dataset below exist to be cited; the scope line matters, so please carry it.
Scope and methodology
Read these limits before citing:
- What was measured: the share of projects with a verified bidder count (
num_bidders≥ 1) that recorded exactly one bidder, per source and overall. Counts come from the ConstructionBids.ai production search index of public works records, computed with read-only aggregation queries on June 30, 2026. - Cumulative, not a trend: these are cumulative records available in our index as of the snapshot date, spanning multiple letting years per source. We deliberately did not publish a "2026 so far" trend cut — the dated H1 2026 roster subsample was too thin to pass our own gate — so do not read this page as a mid-year competition trend.
- Only roster-bearing sources are included. Award databases that record one winner per contract (for example USAspending and SAM.gov award data) would mechanically show a "100% single-bid rate" and were excluded, along with one DOT-labeled source whose records carried the same award-only artifact. Sources appear here only if they publish actual bid-tab-style bidder counts.
- Sample gates: every published cell required at least 100 bidder-count records per source. Cells that failed the gate were suppressed, not padded.
- Sector scope: all six included sources are state-DOT / transportation-style lettings. This page describes DOT public works lettings, not vertical/building construction or public procurement broadly.
- Texas concentration: TxDOT is 73% of the roster-verified sample. TxDOT's letting mix (including routine maintenance contracts) likely differs from the other DOTs' published mixes, and we have not decomposed the rate by work type — treat cross-state comparisons as directional.
- Missing bidder counts are excluded from the denominator. The null rate per source is published in the table above so you can judge exposure; FDOT's 39.5% null rate is the outlier.
How this relates to our transportation bid statistics: that page reports an average of ~4.1 bidders per project from a different, smaller sample built from full bid-tabulation rows (about 1,000 lettings, different sources and date coverage). The two are consistent: an average of four bidders and a large single-bid share can coexist, because multi-bid lettings often draw five or more bidders while a long tail draws one. Use that page for bidder-depth benchmarks and this page for single-bid incidence.
Download the dataset
The published cells behind every number on this page — overall and per-source counts, single-bid counts, rates, and null rates — are available as CSV:
Download single-bid-rate-public-works-v1.csv
The file contains one row per published cell with the exact denominators used above. No registration required.
Cite this research
Please attribute these statistics to ConstructionBids.ai with a link to this page, and please carry the scope ("state-DOT public works lettings with verified bidder rosters, six states, cumulative index records as of June 2026") so the numbers aren't misread as all public construction.
ConstructionBids.ai. "Single-Bid Rate in Public Works: How Often Does Only One Contractor Bid? (2026)." https://constructionbids.ai/resources/single-bid-rate-public-works
Media and researchers: contact support@constructionbids.ai for the underlying methodology, additional breakdowns, or interview requests.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Across 7,278 state-DOT projects with verified bidder rosters in six states, 38.8% received exactly one bid. The blended figure is Texas-weighted: Texas DOT records show a 48.5% single-bid rate, while the other five states combined show 12.1%.
Texas DOT, at 48.5% of 5,349 roster-verified records in our index. New Jersey DOT (21.6%) and Virginia DOT (21.4%) follow. Florida DOT shows the lowest rate (5.8%), but with a 39.5% missing-bidder-count rate that figure carries the most uncertainty.
Common drivers include specialized or routine-maintenance work types, tight or awkward letting schedules, prequalification hurdles, geographic remoteness, and contractors simply not seeing the solicitation. Our data measures the incidence, not the causes; we have not decomposed the rate by work type.
Not on any individual project, but the absence of a competing bid removes the mechanism that disciplines price, which is why auditors and procurement researchers track single-bid rates as a cost-risk indicator.
From bidder counts published in DOT-style letting and bid-tabulation records (TxDOT, NJDOT, VDOT, WSDOT, FDOT, NCDOT), aggregated in the ConstructionBids.ai production index and measured with read-only aggregation queries on June 30, 2026. Award-only databases that would fake a 100% single-bid rate were excluded. See the methodology section for the full limits.
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