WSDOT Construction Bid Item Price Index

An independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Washington State Department of Transportation. WSDOT publishes its bid-tabulation records as a matter of public record under Washington's Public Records Act, RCW 42.56 (https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=42.56). This Actor reads WSDOT's own public bid-tabulation index and PDF reports and reports what it finds, parsed and reshaped into one schema.

Live per run. Every run fetches the requested month(s)' index page and every contract PDF listed on it fresh, straight from wsdot.wa.gov.

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Why this exists

Washington highway/bridge construction bid prices are public, but reading them means opening one PDF per contract by hand, from an index that lists six years of history on twelve calendar-month pages rather than one year-month page per month. The PDFs themselves come from at least three different report-generator variants: which visual column is labelled "LOW BIDDER" shifts per contract (sometimes the middle column, not the first), and a contract with more than 3 bidders prints its entire item table again for the next group of bidders -- a naive parser double-counts every item. Roughly 1 in 5 real WSDOT bid-tab PDFs cannot be read as text at all (a "Microsoft: Print To PDF" export with no recoverable font, or a font with no usable character mapping) and this Actor detects and reports that honestly instead of guessing or crashing. DOTestimate, the closest self-service comparable, indexes 22 states but not Washington as of 2026-08-31 (see DOSSIER.md).

What you get per row

Field	Meaning
state	Always WA
contract_number, ps_e_job_number, wsdot_project_number	WSDOT's own contract identifiers
county, region, highway	Where the work is
project_title	The project's own description, from WSDOT's index page
bids_opened_on, awarded_on	Contract dates, where the source provides them
item_number, item_category, item_label	The bid item: its number, its section (e.g. "PREPARATION", "GRADING"), and WSDOT's own standard pay-item name
quantity, unit_of_measure	How much, in what unit
engineer_estimate_unit_price, engineer_estimate_amount	WSDOT's own pre-bid estimate, per unit and extended, where the item type carries a per-unit price
low_bid_unit_price, low_bid_amount	The AWARDED low bidder's price -- per unit and extended -- the number that determined who won
low_bid_contractor	The company awarded the contract
number_of_bidders	How many companies bid on this contract
source_url	Direct link to WSDOT's own PDF, to verify
source_month	Which requested YYYY-MM this row came from
charged	Whether this row cost you anything
not_charged_reason	Why it did not, in plain English

The billing rule, stated plainly

One event: price row delivered, charged once per unique (contract_number, item_number) in the result. A contract that shows up again on a later run within the same month is charged again -- the same way puc-rate-case-tracker charges again for a docket that develops further, not a duplicate of the first charge.

Coverage -- read this before you rely on it

v1 covers Washington State (WSDOT) only. Oregon (ODOT) has a real, machine-parseable bid-item archive too, but DOTestimate's own FAQ already names Oregon as next on its roadmap -- treated as a future candidate, not built into v1. Not every WSDOT contract PDF can be read: SUMMARY.json in the run's key-value store reports exactly how many contracts were seen, how many parsed, and how many were unparseable and why.

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Input

{
  "months": ["2026-08"]
}

Leave months empty to check only the current calendar month -- WSDOT's own index groups every contract by calendar month across all years on one page, so requesting a broad range can mean a large, slow, expensive run. Invalid entries are ignored; if nothing valid remains, the current month is used.

Output

{
  "state": "WA",
  "contract_number": "XE3760",
  "ps_e_job_number": "26Y012",
  "wsdot_project_number": "XE3760",
  "county": "KING",
  "region": "SCR",
  "highway": "SR 090",
  "project_title": "I-90, EB 3 Miles E of North Bend - Emergency Seeding and Erosion Control Small Works Roster",
  "bids_opened_on": "AUG 12 2026",
  "awarded_on": "AUG 13 2026",
  "item_number": "2",
  "item_category": "EROSION CONTROL AND ROADSIDE PLANTING",
  "item_label": "COIR LOG",
  "quantity": 265.0,
  "unit_of_measure": "L.F.",
  "engineer_estimate_unit_price": 25.0,
  "engineer_estimate_amount": 6625.0,
  "low_bid_unit_price": 20.5,
  "low_bid_amount": 5432.5,
  "low_bid_contractor": "SCARSELLA BROS., INC.",
  "number_of_bidders": 5,
  "source_url": "https://wsdot.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08/Contracts-bidtabulation-26Y012.pdf",
  "source_month": "2026-08",
  "charged": true,
  "not_charged_reason": ""
}

A SUMMARY.json lands in the key-value store with which months were requested, how many contracts were seen/parsed/unparseable, and a charged/free breakdown.