Who can bid TxDOT work: the state's qualified contractors, by the numbers

Texas has no statewide general contractor license, which leaves many owners and subcontractors asking a basic question: who are the general contractors? For highway work there is a clear answer. TxDOT publishes the firms it has qualified to bid, and we have built our Texas GC Finder from that list.

The TxDOT-qualified pool

TxDOT's vendor list on the Texas Open Data Portal identifies 890 Texas-based firms in three bidder categories:

• 411 prequalified prime contractors, qualified through TxDOT's confidential questionnaire with audited financials. They can bid any contract up to their capacity.
• 422 qualified bidders, qualified through the shorter bidder's questionnaire for smaller contracts.
• 57 qualified maintenance contractors.

These counts cover firms whose addresses map to a Texas county.

The specialty trades

For subcontractors, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation publishes open license data for several construction trades. Our Sub Finder includes 30,204 TDLR-licensed contractors:

• 17,133 air conditioning and refrigeration contractors;
• 10,665 electrical contractors;
• 994 water well drillers and pump installers;
• 665 appliance installation contractors;
• 499 electrical sign contractors;
• 248 elevator contractors.

Where they are

Harris County has the most firms in the combined list with 4,613, followed by Dallas (2,534), Tarrant (1,996), Bexar (1,970) and Travis (1,160). By TxDOT district, Houston leads with about 7,100 firms and Dallas has about 5,000.

What's missing

There are gaps. Plumbers are licensed by a separate agency, the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, and are not part of TDLR's open license data, so they are not loaded yet. Many trades, including concrete, framing, drywall, roofing, painting and site work, have no state license at all, so no public roster exists. Those firms can add a free listing. Cities issue their own registrations, which we don't yet aggregate.

How to use the lists

Primes looking for subs can filter the Sub Finder by county and license type. Subs looking for primes can use the GC Finder to see which TxDOT-qualified firms are based near a job, then check TxDOT's plan-holder lists for contracts they want to quote. Each listing links to its public source, and owners can claim and complete their profiles.

Why the categories matter

TxDOT's three bidder categories line up with the kinds of work on a typical letting. November's letting has 61 contracts, and 35 of them are estimated between $1 million and $5 million. Seventeen are routine maintenance contracts. TxDOT's shorter bidder's questionnaire exists for smaller contracts, and maintenance contractors have their own category, which is why the qualified pool is much broader than the roughly 400 prequalified primes.

Keeping the list current

Our Texas rosters come from the TxDOT and TDLR open-data downloads, and each listing shows the public source and the license or vendor category it came from. Firms that have merged, moved or closed can claim their listing and correct it.

Who needs to be on the list

TxDOT prequalification applies to prime contractors bidding on its highway construction contracts. Subcontractors are not prequalified by TxDOT, so many of the state's highway subs appear in our Texas listings only if they hold a TDLR license or add their own listing. Primes looking for subs can also search the Texas Unified Certification Program directory for DBE firms.

Use the counties

Every one of Texas's 254 counties has a hub page on this site, even where no qualified firm is based. Each hub shows the TxDOT contracts in that county, the firms headquartered there and local construction news.

Plumbing contractors are licensed by the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, which offers its own license lookup. We will add plumbers when a bulk public source is available.