BLACK ANCHOR DESIGN BLOG
What owners, engineers, and general contractors look for on your site before they open your bid.
Owners, engineers, and general contractors often look at your website before they open your bid. This checklist covers what they look for, so you can check whether it is on your site and easy to find in under 30 seconds.
Who you are
- Legal company name, matching your bid documents, bonds, and insurance certificates exactly
- Where you operate, by county or region
- A named contact for bids, with phone and email
- Company history and ownership in two or three sentences
What you do
- One page per scope: water and wastewater, electrical transmission and distribution, utilities, site work, roads and bridges, municipal facilities
- Work you self-perform stated separately from work you subcontract
- Typical project size range, in dollars
- The owners you serve: municipalities, utilities, state agencies, private developers, general contractors
Qualifications
- Licenses and registrations you hold
- The agencies where you are prequalified, such as TxDOT, cities, counties, and utilities (name them; do not publish financial statements)
- Bonding capacity, single and aggregate
- Insurance types and limits you carry, with certificates available on request
- Certifications you hold, such as HUB, DBE, or SBE, with the certifying agency named
Safety
- A written summary of your safety program
- Your safety record in the form owners ask for, such as EMR, TRIR, or DART if you track them
- Crew training and certifications: OSHA 10 and 30, confined space, trench safety, flagger
- A drug-free workplace statement
Past performance
- Six to twelve completed projects, each with owner, scope, contract value, completion year, and your role
- Projects sorted by scope, so a buyer can find the one that matches theirs
- Photos of your own jobs and crews, not stock images
- References available on request, with each owner's permission
People and equipment
- Key personnel with short experience summaries: principals, project managers, superintendents, estimator, safety lead
- A summary of the equipment you own, by category
Documents
- A downloadable capabilities statement as a PDF, with the same company name, contact, and date as the site
- File names that identify the company, such as Company-Name-Capabilities-Statement.pdf, not final_v3.pdf
- PDFs saved as text, not scanned images, so they can be searched and read by screen readers
Hiring
- Open roles by type, with pay or pay range, requirements, and the hiring steps and timeline
- A short mobile application, plus a call or text option
- An equal opportunity employer statement
Technical basics
- Loads quickly and works on a phone; field crews and many reviewers use one
- Basic accessibility: readable contrast, image descriptions, keyboard navigation
- Contact forms that reach a monitored inbox, tested monthly
- Company name, address, and phone identical on the site, Google Business Profile, and bid documents
Why these items matter
Public work comes with requirements a website cannot replace, but the site should reflect them accurately. Under Texas Government Code Section 2253.021, a performance bond is required on public work contracts over $100,000, and a payment bond on contracts over $25,000 for most entities and over $50,000 for municipalities. TxDOT prequalification is renewed yearly, and its construction questionnaire requires an audited financial statement. TxDOT also states it no longer requires e-mod ratings, though other owners and general contractors may still ask for safety numbers.
Want your site reviewed against this list?
Book a free 30-minute Zoom call and we will go through it together.
