The work you want already belongs to somebody else, and that's good news. Public contracts have terms. One year, three years, five, usually with options on the end. So the job you want has a date when it comes back out, and that date is sitting there right now, a year before anybody advertises anything. Most of us find out a job is open the day it drops, which leaves thirty days to build a relationship you don't have and write a response from nothing. The firm that used to win it knew about it last year. The bid tab tells you who has it now, and the contract tells you how long they have it for. Put those two together and you've got a calendar. A year is enough time to do everything the thirty-day version of you can't. Pick one you want and go find out when it ends. When does it come back out?

Prequalification is handing an agency your financials, your bonding capacity and your work history, and getting approved to bid before anything even goes out. It costs you paperwork and that's about it. The honest part is that it isn't always necessary. Most agencies don't require it, so don't treat it like a gate you have to clear before you're allowed to start. But when it is required, it's required, and finding that out two days before a deadline is how you watch a job you could have done go by without you. And when it's optional it still helps you. It's public record, and anybody can say they do public work, but a prequalification means somebody actually checked. So go find out what the three or four agencies you really want to work for require. Not all of them, just the ones you want. Do you know which of yours ask for it?

Everybody wants the one website where all of it gets posted, and there isn't one. Some agencies post on their own site, some use a state portal, and some use a third party platform. Two departments inside the same city will use different ones. There are aggregators that try to pull it together, but they're incomplete, they cost money, and you'll still miss jobs. So stop looking for the master list and pick your agencies instead. Four or five of them. Go to each one, find out where they post, and register as a vendor so they email you when something comes out. That's one afternoon of work, and after it the jobs come to you instead of you going out hunting for them. Honestly, this took me longer to work out than it should have. I spent a couple of years looking for the list. If you can't name four agencies you'd want to work for, that's the real problem, and it's worth more of your time than any website is. What would your four be?

On a cooperative contract, a change order costs you more than it makes you. This has nothing to do with the contract language. These vehicles are relationship based. An agency bought off somebody else's award because it was faster than running their own, and they picked you. Somebody put their name and credibility on that. Now think about what your change order does to that person. They may have to go back and ask for more money, sometimes in front of City Council, and in public, explaining why the number they brought forward wasn't the real number. That's not paperwork to them, that's their credibility. That same person also decides whether to use you again next year. Price it so you don't have to ask for more. Cover your costs to do the work right, including the part you're hoping won't happen. Bid the work, not the margin. Some change orders are unavoidable, scope moves and unforeseen things happen. When it does, get it approved before you do the work. Every time. Honestly, I've written change orders I'm not proud of and some I should have been more prepared for. Pull your last public job. Did you have change orders on it? How many were scope actually moving, and how many were you catching something you should have caught?

It isn't just one kind of contract, that's what trips people up. JOCs, IDIQ's, third party co-ops and some hard bids (that one surprises people, everybody assumes a straight low bid job can't carry it) can all have cooperative language in them. What makes a contract cooperative isn't the procurement method, it's the language inside it. So you can't tell from the name on the front page, you have to go look. Next one you read, find out whether it's in there. It changes what the contract is worth to you before you've priced a single line.