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A RocketLevel vertical playbook for restoration sales managers and owners, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 5-minute read. Read the four-question framework in How to Read Any Commercial Vertical first; this applies it to government and municipal.
Government restoration work is bought through procurement as much as through relationships, and disaster work is often reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), so your documentation decides whether anyone gets paid. Federal, state, local, and tribal entities each buy a little differently, but all reward the contractor who is registered, bondable, and fluent in the paperwork.
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Reviewed October 2026. Procurement rules, bond statutes and their deadlines change, and they vary by state. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with the contracting agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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This is the part that costs money when a shop carries a private-work habit onto a public job. You cannot place a mechanics lien on public property. The remedy instead is a claim against the payment bond, and that claim expires.
First confirm a bond exists at all, because not every federal job carries one. Under 40 U.S.C. 3131(b), a performance bond and a payment bond must be furnished before award of any contract over $100,000 for the construction, alteration, or repair of a public building or public work of the federal government. The acquisition rule, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), sits higher than the statute. FAR 28.102-1 requires both bonds on construction contracts exceeding $150,000, and for contracts above $35,000 but not over $150,000 the contracting officer selects alternative payment protections instead. Below that line there may be no payment bond standing behind you, which leaves you with no lien and no bond. Ask for a copy of the bond before you sign the subcontract.
On federal work under the Miller Act at 40 U.S.C. 3133(b), a claimant with a contract with a subcontractor but no contract with the prime that furnished the bond must give the prime written notice within 90 days of the day it last performed labor or last supplied material. Any suit on the bond must be brought no later than one year after that same last day. Both run from your last day on the job, not from your invoice, your last payment, or closeout. Miss the notice and the claim is gone.
State, county, and city jobs are not under the Miller Act. Each state runs its own public-works bond statute, usually called a Little Miller Act, and each sets its own bond threshold, its own notice window, and its own suit deadline. The over-$100,000 threshold, the 90-day notice, and the one-year suit deadline are federal numbers. They are not portable. Carrying them onto a county or school district job is how a claim dies against a deadline that was never 90 days in the first place.
So, at the start of every public job: request a copy of the payment bond, read its notice provisions, and confirm the statutory deadlines for that state with a construction attorney. Then calendar your notice date and your suit deadline off your projected last day of work and move them when the schedule moves. If the 90-day mark is approaching and you are unsure whether notice is required, send it anyway.
When a city, county, school district or other public entity plans to ask FEMA Public Assistance to pay for disaster work, the contract it signs with you falls under federal procurement standards in 2 CFR 200.317 to 200.327. A state or tribal government follows its own procurement policies plus a few of those sections; cities, counties, school districts and most other public entities follow all of them (200.317). If the contract misses them, FEMA can disallow part or all of the cost, and the entity is left with a bill it expected to pass through. That is where payment slows down or stops. Ask these before the first fan runs.