🏠 Home · 📚 Library · 🚀 About RocketLevel · 📘 Playbooks · 🗺️ Free Market Report · 📅 Book a Call

Commercial bidding has a paperwork gate. Build the packet before the first request for proposal lands.

A RocketLevel piece for restoration owners, ops, and sales managers, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 6-minute read.

<aside> ⚖️

Reviewed October 2026. OSHA recordkeeping rules and state requirements change. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.

</aside>

In insurance and residential restoration, the work usually comes to you. A call comes in, you respond, you mitigate, you bill. In commercial work, you have to be invited to compete, and the invitation comes with a stack of paperwork. A facility owner, property manager, or risk manager will not let you near a real bid until you have proven you are a safe, insured, financially sound, and properly licensed company. That proof is the prequalification packet.

In our experience this is where independents get caught off guard. By the time you see the request for proposal (RFP), the clock is already running. A commercial RFP might give you only days to respond, and a meaningful chunk of that response is documentation. The shops that win are the ones who can turn the paperwork around in hours because they assembled it in advance and keep it current.

A complete, current prequalification packet is a competitive asset on its own. Here is what goes in it.

• 📑 Jump to a section

The documents a commercial decision maker will demand

Prequalification requirements vary by decision maker, but the core list is consistent across property managers, general contractors, and institutional owners:

• Three years of OSHA 300 and 300A logs. The 300 log records work-related injuries and illnesses; the 300A is the annual summary. Decision makers use these to see your injury history and to cross-check your incident rate. Have all three years clean, executive-certified, and posted on time: the 300A covering a calendar year goes up on February 1 of the next year and stays up through April 30 (29 CFR 1904.32), and the records are kept for five years (29 CFR 1904.33). If you had 10 or fewer employees at all times last calendar year you are partially exempt from keeping the logs at all (29 CFR 1904.1); say that plainly on the form rather than leaving a blank, and be aware that the exemption never covers your duty to report a fatality within 8 hours or a hospitalization, amputation, or eye loss within 24 hours (29 CFR 1904.39).
• Your experience modification rate (EMR). The workers'-comp number that compares your claims history against the expected average for your class and payroll. Each decision maker sets its own ceiling, and nobody publishes a standard one. 1.0 is the most common, some set 0.90 or 0.85, and some set none. How the number is built and which levers actually move it are covered in Know Your Experience Modification Rate (EMR): What Moves It and How to Bring It Down. Note that if your shop falls below your state's premium eligibility threshold you are not experience rated at all and have no mod. Say so on the form and attach the carrier's confirmation rather than writing 1.0.
• Your total recordable incident rate (TRIR). Calculated from your OSHA logs as (number of recordable incidents x 200,000) / total hours worked. The 200,000 represents 100 employees working a 40-hour week for 50 weeks, so TRIR expresses incidents per 100 full-time workers per year. Decision makers compare yours against industry benchmarks.
• Your days away, restricted, or transferred (DART) rate. Built from the same OSHA logs and the same 200,000-hour denominator as TRIR, but counting only the cases serious enough to cost days away, restricted duty, or a job transfer. Decision makers read TRIR and DART together: TRIR shows how often you record an injury, DART shows how often one was serious enough to change a worker's duty.
• Written safety programs. A documented safety manual, hazard communication program, and the written plans that match the work you actually do. For restoration on a construction site that means fall protection under 29 CFR 1926.501 and respiratory protection under 29 CFR 1926.103, which is the construction standard and adopts 1910.134 wholesale, including the written program requirement at (c)(1). Cite 1926.103 on a construction prequalification form. The content is identical, and citing the general-industry section on construction work tells a safety reviewer you copied the reference rather than read it. Be careful with lockout/tagout: the general-industry lockout/tagout (LOTO) standard at 1910.147 expressly excludes construction employment at (a)(1)(ii)(A), so a prequalification form asking a construction contractor for a "1910.147 LOTO program" is asking for the wrong document. Energy control on construction work runs through the construction standards, including the lockout and tagging of circuits requirements at 1926.417. Keep a 1910.147 program if you also service fixed equipment in your own shop, and be able to explain which one applies where. Many decision makers want to see the programs on paper as well as in practice.
• Certificates of insurance (COIs). General liability and workers' compensation at minimum, often auto liability and an umbrella policy. Decision makers specify required limits and frequently require that they be named as additional insured. Keep a template COI request ready for your agent.
• Bonding capacity. A letter from your surety stating your single-project and aggregate bonding limits. On federal work the rule is written down: a construction contract over $150,000 requires performance and payment bonds under the Miller Act (40 U.S.C. 3131, with the threshold as adjusted in FAR 28.102-1), and a bid guarantee is required whenever those bonds are (FAR 28.101-1). State and local public work runs on each state's own little Miller Act, at its own threshold, so look up the state the project sits in. Larger commercial owners set their own bond requirements in the contract.
• Licenses and certifications. Your contractor's license(s) for each state and trade, plus relevant credentials (Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) firm and technician certifications, any required environmental or abatement licenses).
• References. Three to five comparable commercial projects with contact names, project values, and scope. Commercial decision makers call references; pick clients who will pick up the phone.