How to research state and local contract pricing before you bid

To research state and local contract pricing, find comparable work in G2X SLED, then look for the issuing buyer's prior solicitation, bid tabulation and award record. Read the price together with its service requirements and contract period. That gives your estimator a useful comparison to investigate when preparing a new bid.

The research is especially worthwhile when a familiar service appears under an unfamiliar buyer. Your team may know what it costs to staff the work, but still need to understand how the buyer packaged the requirement, which responsibilities it included and how competitors priced that particular scope.

Start with the market your company can serve. G2X SLED lets you search state, local and education opportunities by service and narrow the results by geography or buyer type. The SLED research guide covers the search filters and source documents. Once a requirement looks relevant, follow its original source and look for the buyer's related procurement records. Public availability varies, so a missing bid tabulation may simply mean more research is needed.

Two monthly prices, two different service schedules

The City of Lynchburg's 2026 procurement for janitorial services at Bluffwalk and the Riverfront Park Complex illustrates why the scope belongs beside the number. This is a March 2026 contract example, not an open September opportunity or a current market-wide rate.

In the city's March 17 bid tabulation, E.J.L.D. LLC, doing business as Hometown Cleaning Services, submitted $400.00 per month for Bluffwalk and $600.00 per month for Riverfront Park Complex. The annual amounts were $4,800.00 and $7,200.00 respectively. The March 18 notice identified $12,000.00 for the initial term, and the city's bid page now lists the procurement as awarded to Hometown Cleaning Services.

Those figures become more useful after reading the specifications. The work involved outdoor litter and debris collection. Bluffwalk required service twice a week; Riverfront required it three times a week. The documents also defined the service areas and excluded work such as landscaping and hazardous-material removal.

For a company assessing a similar requirement, the immediate question is how its proposed service compares with those obligations. A different site, frequency, travel distance or waste-handling responsibility changes the economics. The historical monthly price gives the estimator something concrete to examine, while the scope explains which comparisons would be useful.

It does not reveal the contractor's labor cost or profit. Your own staffing, travel and supply assumptions still need to support the price you submit.

Follow the amount back to the work

A useful research note keeps the price connected to the buyer, solicitation number, service unit and period. Keep the source links with it. Six weeks later, when someone asks why the team used a particular comparison, those details save another search through a procurement portal.

Read the full package when the price looks unexpectedly low or high. Optional work, different quantities or an excluded responsibility can explain a difference that the headline total hides. Addenda may also change the work bidders were asked to price. In the Lynchburg example, the initial term was one year with possible annual renewals; those options do not establish that the buyer committed to five years of spending.

The stage of the record matters too. North Carolina's official bid-tabulation guidance distinguishes preliminary tabs, which identify bidders, from final tabs with pricing and the separate award information. When researching another jurisdiction, read what that buyer's record actually reports before treating a listed amount as an awarded price.

Bring the comparison back to your bid

G2X's free Community Edition gives a small business a place to begin SLED opportunity research and retain account context in CRM. Keep the buyer, source links and the question your estimator needs to answer together. A Saved View can make the next market review easier; the Saved Views guide explains how to return to the same procurement filters.

When you have several documents to compare, upload the approved solicitation, bid tabulation and related addenda to G2X Lumen. Ask it to identify the priced scope, reconcile the units and periods, and explain the differences from the new requirement with document references. The Lumen guide explains how to review the evidence behind an answer, and pricing covers Lumen access. Reading the same source package with your estimator remains a free manual path.

Use that comparison to decide what still needs an estimate or a clarification from the buyer. A well-supported pricing decision should explain how your team will deliver this requirement and why the selected historical examples are relevant. That is a much better starting point than carrying another contractor's number into a different scope.