SLED Contracts: State, Local and Education Bids in One Daily Alert

SLED stands for State, Local, and Education: the non-federal government market of state agencies, counties, cities and towns, school districts, and colleges and universities. It is where much of the work a small trades business can win gets bought, and ContractRadar covers every kind of SLED buyer. You can filter your search to one kind of buyer, save a search, and get one daily alert across all your saved searches.

What you can do with it

• Filter by buyer type. The search page has a Buyer type filter under Advanced filters: City / town, County, Schools & colleges, Authorities & districts, State and Federal. Pick Schools & colleges and search for “HVAC” to see only school and college HVAC work.
• Save the search and get a daily alert. Save an HVAC search at school districts, switch its alert on, and new matching solicitations from the districts we monitor arrive in your daily email, instead of you checking district websites one at a time.
• See a county’s or township’s bids without knowing where they are posted. Local governments publish on all kinds of procurement portals. For the ones we monitor, you search ContractRadar, not the portals.

Who the buyers are

SLED covers five kinds of buyer, and they buy differently:

• State agencies. Highway departments, university systems, prisons and parks buy through the statewide procurement system. We cover 49 state portals.
• Cities, towns, townships and boroughs. Streets, parks, buildings, water and sewer. We monitor 341 cities and towns.
• Counties. Courthouses, roads, jails, fleets and facilities. We monitor 165 county governments directly, and Pennsylvania local agencies adds bids from more.
• School districts and colleges. Roofs, HVAC, paving, flooring, fencing, painting, grounds and janitorial. We follow 35 school districts and colleges directly. Pennsylvania local agencies adds many more school districts and colleges on top.
• Authorities and special districts. Water and sewer authorities, housing authorities, transit agencies, airports and ports. We follow 28 of them directly, and Pennsylvania local agencies adds many more townships, boroughs and municipal authorities.

Every source is listed by buyer type on the coverage page.

Why schools and authorities matter to the trades

City halls and counties get the attention, but school districts and authorities are some of the steadiest buyers of building and infrastructure work. Schools maintain a lot of square footage, and much of the work is scheduled into the summer window when the buildings are empty, so bids go out well ahead of it. Water and sewer authorities buy pumps, pipe, tank painting and paving through the year. Housing authorities need flooring, landscaping and HVAC across many small buildings.

Recent examples

These are real solicitations ContractRadar picked up recently, with the buyer named. They show the kind of work that appears, not what is open today.

• HVAC: “HVAC Renovations and Upgrades” at several schools from the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, PA.
• Painting: “Field House Exterior Painting” at Pennsylvania College of Technology.
• Paving: “Furnishing Paving Services” from the Chester Water Authority, PA.
• Pump stations: a “2026 Pump Station Improvements Project” from the Upper Leacock Township Municipal Authority, PA.
• Flooring: an “RFP for Flooring Services” from the Housing Authority of the County of Chester, PA.
• Landscaping: “Central Park Landscape Enhancements - Phase 2” from the Allentown Housing Authority, PA.
• Roofing: a partial roof replacement at Dorchester School District Two, SC.

Read each solicitation before you bid

Each buyer sets its own rules. To download documents, receive addenda or submit a response you usually need to register as a vendor with that buyer, and school districts and authorities often add their own requirements, such as insurance certificates or background checks for work on school grounds. ContractRadar links you to the original posting, so read its instructions before you price the job.

Get started

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