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Government Construction Contracts for Small Builders
Construction is two doors wearing one name: the general contractor's and the specialty trade's, with different size standards and different subcontracting lines. Here is both, with the numbers separated the way the rules separate them.
Beginners ask about "construction contracts" as if it were one market. The rules treat it as at least two. A general contractor bids under codes like NAICS 236220 (Commercial and Institutional Building Construction), size standard $45 million in average yearly receipts. A specialty trade — electrical, plumbing, roofing, concrete, painting — bids under the NAICS 238 family, where most codes carry a $19 million standard (13 CFR 121.201). Same industry, different doors, different math. The free readiness checker asks which one you are before it reads a single number, because a verdict that mixes the two is wrong in both directions.
Where small builders actually win
The simplified band — $15,000 to $350,000, reserved for small businesses under FAR 13.003(b) — is thick with construction-shaped work: repairs, renovations, paving, fencing, roofing jobs, ADA fixes, the perpetual maintenance tail of every federal installation and office building. Job-order and simplified-acquisition vehicles at military bases and federal buildings recycle exactly this size of work. Below the band, small repairs ride the $15,000 card door (with the construction carve-out noted: the micro-purchase threshold for construction subject to wage-rate requirements is $2,000 — know which box your job is in before you quote it as a card sale). Above the band, full competition adds bonding, formal proposals, and past-performance scoring — a later door, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
The two lines a builder must not cross blind
Construction is where the subcontracting rules bite trades directly, because builders sub work by habit. On a set-aside, FAR 52.219-14 caps what you may pay subcontractors who don't share your status at 85% for general construction and 75% for specialty trade construction (materials excluded) — looser than services' 50%, because the rule was written knowing how construction teams. The trap is not the percentage; it is the mirror-image one: a small firm that wins a set-aside and subs nearly everything while adding no management of its own walks into the pass-through rule (FAR 52.215-23) and the ostensible-subcontractor doctrine with its eyes closed. The Middleman Line checker draws your structure against both, free. Bonding deserves the same honesty: many larger construction awards require payment and performance bonds, bonding capacity is a real gate with a real underwriting process, and any seller who waves it away is selling. In the simplified band, bonding is required less often — one more reason the band is the beginner's door.
Wage rules ride along
Federal construction carries the Wage Rate Requirements (Davis-Bacon) on covered work — prevailing-wage schedules attached to the contract — and service contracts carry their own labor standards. These are not traps; they are line items. Price them into the bid from the schedule in the posting, and the "cheap bid that wins and bleeds" pattern — the most common way small builders lose money on government work — never starts.
The builder's first three moves
One: SAM registration under your correct code family — 236 or 238 is a verdict-level distinction, not a detail. Two: your state portal and your state's APEX center, whose bid lists are dense with local construction and repair work, and whose counselors will tell you plainly whether your bonding and licensing are shaped for the band you are aiming at. Three: a capability statement that reads like a builder's — licenses, bonding level stated honestly, project list with dollar values, safety record — the four things construction buyers actually scan for.
Inside the GovDoor Kit, the construction first-move sheets separate general from specialty the way this page does, the worked construction capability statement shows the four buyer signals on one page, and the Middleman Line section prints the 85%/75% table next to a sample work-share table that stays inside it.
Questions, answered plainly
What is the size standard for a small construction business?
It depends which door: general construction codes like NAICS 236220 carry a $45 million receipts standard; most specialty-trade codes in the NAICS 238 family carry $19 million. Both are SBA size standards under 13 CFR 121.201 — and which one applies to you is decided by the code on the contract, so know your family before any set-aside math.
How much of a set-aside construction contract can I subcontract?
85% for general construction and 75% for specialty trade construction — measured on amounts paid to subcontractors who don't hold your same program status, excluding the cost of materials (FAR 52.219-14). Work by subs who share your status counts as your own performance.
Do I need bonding for government construction work?
For larger formal contracts, commonly yes — payment and performance bonds are standard gates, and capacity is earned through an underwriter. In the $15,000–$350,000 simplified band bonding is required less often, which is one reason that band is where small builders realistically start. Anyone who tells you bonding never matters is selling you something.