How to Read a Bid Tabulation

A "bid tabulation" (or "bid results") document is the official record an awarding agency publishes after bids are opened on a public contract - who bid, how much, and in what order. Here's a real example, field by field.

The real source line

A25 121648 0064-007-024, C501 0064 Staunton AUGUSTA C4198 CREATIVE DESIGN CONCEPTS, INC. $2,263,907.04

This is one real line from VDOT's June 24, 2026 "As-Read Bid Letting Results" report - a contract in Augusta County that drew three bidders. Here's what each piece means:

Order No (A25): The agency's internal sequence number for this contract within that day's letting - not usually meaningful outside that one report.
UPC No (121648): A unique project/contract identifier, stable across the project's whole life (from advertisement through construction) - the closest thing to a permanent reference number.
Project/Route No (0064-007-024, C501 / 0064): The specific project and route the work is on - useful for cross-referencing against the original advertised bid notice.
District & County (Staunton / Augusta): Where the work is - the two most useful fields for deciding whether a contract is even worth chasing.
Vendor Code (C4198): The bidder's internal registration code with the agency - not something you need to track yourself.
Contractor & Bid Amount: Who bid, and how much - the two fields everyone actually reads this document for.

Why the order matters

The same contract had two more bidders listed right after the one above: Lumin8 Transportation Technologies, LLC at $2,761,113.00, then Richardson-Wayland-Ferreira, LLC at $2,895,385.79. That's not alphabetical or random - bid tabulations list bidders in ascending dollar order, lowest first. The first name listed is the apparent low bidder - "apparent" because the agency still has to verify bonding, licensing, and responsiveness before the contract is formally awarded. It's the best real signal available of who's about to win, which is exactly why this project's own GC directory listings are seeded from this same data (see the State-by-State Bidding Guide for how each state actually publishes this).

What varies by state

Every state we track publishes some version of this same core idea - a ranked list of bidders per contract - but the exact format is never identical: some publish a single low bidder only (no full field), some use PDFs with inconsistent field order line to line, some expose a plain JSON API. The State-by-State Bidding Guide covers the real mechanics for each of the 12 states this site tracks.