Performance and payment bonds protect a public owner and the subcontractors and suppliers below the prime, and the thresholds set in each solicitation decide which projects a general contractor can actually pursue against its surety program.
What performance and payment bonds require
A performance bond guarantees the owner that the project will be completed per contract; a payment bond guarantees that subcontractors and suppliers are paid. Public solicitations commonly require both at one hundred percent of the contract value, posted before notice to proceed, with a bid guarantee submitted at offer. The required amounts, combined with the contractor's aggregate program, set how much work it can carry at once.
Why bond thresholds are easy to miss
The bond percentages and the timing sit in the procurement and general conditions sections, not the title. A contractor reading for scope can miss that a project's bonds, stacked on current backlog, exceed its aggregate bonding capacity. Across many portals the number that decides eligibility is rarely the one on the listing page.
How an AI bid agent flags bond thresholds
An AI bid agent extracts the bid, performance, and payment bond requirements from each solicitation and scores them against the contractor's single project and aggregate capacity. Projects that fit move into the digest; projects that exceed capacity are logged with the reason so the team does not chase work the surety will not back.
You can see bonding fields surfaced on each opportunity in our AI bid agent demo for general contractors. The agent ranks what fits your program and logs what does not, with the reason.