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Work these seven gates before the bid goes out: six protect your margin, and one protects your right to bid public work at all.

The working gate for Prevailing Wage, Certified Payroll, and the Miller Act: Getting Paid on Public Work, Breaking Into Government and Institutional Work and Getting Approved for Government Work: SAM, Set-Asides, and the Process. Those pages explain the rules. This one is worked once per opportunity, before you price it.

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Reviewed October 2026. Prevailing wage, procurement and bond rules change, and they vary by state and funding program. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with the contracting officer, your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.

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How to use this gate. Print a copy and write the opportunity on it. Gate 1 decides which of the later gates apply to you, so work it first and do not skip ahead.

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Public work punishes compliance mistakes harder than private work. On a private job a compliance mistake costs you money and you argue about it. On public work, a certified payroll that is late or wrong can mean payment withheld, and for repeated or willful violations, debarment. Debarment reaches past this job to every public job for a period of years, at every agency, and under 40 U.S.C. 3144(b) and 29 CFR 5.12 it can reach responsible officers and any firm, corporation, partnership, or association in which the contractor, the subcontractor, or a responsible officer has an interest, not only the entity that filed the payroll. Neither text carries a substantiality threshold, so do not read one in. Under the current 29 CFR 5.12(a)(1) the standard and the 3-year period are the same on a Davis-Bacon contract and on a Related Act contract, both keyed to having disregarded obligations to workers or subcontractors. What differs is the decision maker. Under 5.12(a)(2), on a Davis-Bacon Act contract the Administrator transmits a recommendation to the Comptroller General, and on a Related Act contract the Administrator determines the debarment.

That is why Gate 4 below is a hard stop.

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• 📑 Jump to a section

The opportunity

• Project and location:
• Solicitation or contract number:
• Public body or agency named on the solicitation:
• Who we would contract with, exact legal entity:
• Our tier: direct contract with the public body, subcontract to a prime, or lower:
• Estimated contract value:
• Bid due:
• Gate worked by, on:

Gate 1. Which kind of public money this is

Everything below branches off this answer, and "government job" is not an answer. Find the funding source in the solicitation, and if it is not stated, ask the contracting officer or the purchasing agent in writing.