On federal building work above the statutory threshold the Miller Act requires performance and payment bonds, and the solicitation requires a bid guarantee with the offer. A general contractor that cannot post the required bonds is not a responsible bidder, no matter how sharp the price.
What the Miller Act requires
The Miller Act requires a prime contractor on a federal construction contract above the threshold to furnish a performance bond and a payment bond, typically each at the full contract amount, before work begins. The solicitation also sets a bid guarantee, often five percent of the bid, submitted with the offer. These requirements set the bonding capacity a contractor must hold to bid and to be awarded, and they appear on state and locally funded public work in parallel forms.
Why bonding requirements end a bid before it starts
Bid guarantee and bond requirements sit in the solicitation provisions and the procurement section, pages into the documents. A contractor that discovers a full performance and payment bond requirement late, against a project that exceeds its single project bonding capacity, has spent estimating hours on work it could never be awarded. The requirement is decisive and it is buried.
How an AI agent checks Miller Act and bid bond terms
An AI bid agent reads each solicitation and extracts the bid guarantee, the performance and payment bond requirements, and the implied bonding capacity, then scores them against the contractor profile. A federal project whose bonds exceed the contractor's capacity is screened out with that reason, before any estimating begins.
You can see the extracted bond fields and the screening reasons in our AI bid agent demo for general contractors. The agent scores bonding requirements against your single project and aggregate capacity.