TxDOT's November letting: 61 contracts and about $881 million in engineer's estimates across 25 districts

The Texas Department of Transportation will open bids on 61 contracts at its November statewide letting, according to TxDOT's open project data. Thirty contracts take bids on Nov. 3 and 31 on Nov. 4. Added together, the sealed engineer's estimates TxDOT reports come to about $880.96 million.

Dollars are concentrated; contracts are spread out

Two contracts account for most of that total:

• the $408.6 million I-35 reconstruction in Austin (contract 11263001);
• a $144.4 million widening of I-35 in Denton County (11263201), which would take the freeway from four to six lanes between north of Rector Road and south of FM 455.

The next largest are a $39.9 million widening of SH 5 in Collin County and a $31.7 million contract to replace SH 30 bridges and approaches in Brazos and Grimes counties.

By count, the letting leans to smaller maintenance work. Eight contracts have estimates under $1 million, and 13 are estimated at $10 million or more. The most common classifications are:

• sealed routine maintenance (11 contracts);
• seal coat (8);
• other routine maintenance (6);
• overlay, traffic control devices, safety improvements and intersection work (4 each).

The FY 2027 seal-coat program

Several of the larger contracts bundle dozens of seal-coat projects into one bid:

• the Lubbock District's FY 2027 seal coat contract (11263204) groups 53 projects, with an estimate of $25.7 million;
• the Yoakum District's contract (11263207) groups 57 projects and is estimated at $17.1 million;
• contracts in the Paris and Amarillo districts group 37 and 28 projects.

These are large, fast, seasonal jobs. Working-day limits in the data run from 64 to 150 days. That favors primes with their own distributors and aggregate supply, and creates steady work for trucking and traffic-control subs.

Every district but a few

The November contracts touch 25 TxDOT districts. Austin and Waco have seven each, Houston five, and Dallas and Paris four each. Bryan, Amarillo, Brownwood and Corpus Christi have three apiece.

How to use this

Primes need TxDOT prequalification to bid. Subs and suppliers don't, but they need to know which primes are pricing each job. Check our bids table by county, then the plan-holder list on TxDOT's letting pages. Estimates are not bids, and TxDOT may postpone or withdraw contracts before the letting. We will follow up with the low bids after TxDOT posts its tabulations.

By size

Grouping the 61 sealed engineer's estimates by size shows where most of the bidding will happen:

• under $1 million: 8 contracts;
• $1 million to $5 million: 35 contracts;
• $5 million to $10 million: 5 contracts;
• $10 million to $50 million: 11 contracts;
• $50 million and up: 2 contracts.

The $1 million to $5 million band holds more than half the contracts. That is the range where regional primes, and specialty firms bidding as primes on maintenance work, compete most often.

Records, counties and federal money

The 61 contracts contain 364 individual project records touching 113 Texas counties. Thirty of the 61 contracts include at least one record with a federal project number, so federal contract provisions such as Davis-Bacon wage rates and Buy America will apply to roughly half the letting. The data's DBE goal field reads 0.0 on every record, so subs should check each proposal for the actual goal rather than relying on the data portal.

Timing

TxDOT's data lists a 1:00 p.m. bid deadline on each letting day. Working-day limits across the letting run from 30 days on the smallest jobs to 1,495 days on the Austin I-35 contract.

Where the seal-coat bundles go

The project records show how far a single seal-coat contract reaches. The Lubbock District's 53 projects span 16 counties, with the most in Lubbock (8) and Hale (7). The Yoakum District's 57 projects cover 11 counties from Austin County to Calhoun on the coast. The Paris District's 37 projects are spread across seven counties, led by Hunt (9) and Fannin (8). The Amarillo District's 28 projects reach 13 Panhandle counties. A separate Wichita Falls District contract (11263002, about $13.5 million) bundles 32 districtwide re-striping projects across nine counties.