Every school, library and courthouse in this state is bought in public, on paper, under one chapter of the Delaware Code. This page explains the process from the documents themselves — the Bond Bill, the Certificate of Necessity, the advertisement, the addenda, the bid security, the opening, the award notice — using the two projects Groundwork has filed in full: the Newark Free Library and the John G. Leach School.
Nothing is bid until it is funded, and the funding is public a year or two before the first advertisement. For state and school projects the instrument is the annual Bond and Capital Improvements Act — the “Bond Bill” — passed at the end of June for the fiscal year starting July 1. The FY2026 act, passed June 30, 2025, was about $1 billion, with some $210 million of it education capital.
A school district cannot spend that money on a building until the Department of Education issues a Certificate of Necessity: a short resolution that states the total program cost, the state share and the local share, and certifies to the State Treasurer that the construction is necessary. Colonial School District's FY2025 certificate for William Penn High School reads $67,668,404 total, $40,601,042 state, $27,067,362 local — the usual 60/40 split. Special schools like Leach can be funded entirely by the state; no referendum is needed when there is no local share. Counties fund their buildings through their own capital program and budget; library construction also draws on the state's Library Construction and Assistance Act.
The lesson for anyone chasing work: the capital budget is the earliest signal. Money is authorized 12–24 months before design services are procured, and design runs a year or more before the first trade bid. Read the budgets and you can see the boards of two years from now.
Most large Delaware public buildings are delivered as construction management — agency. The owner hires an architect to design, a construction manager to run the procurement and the site, and then holds every prime trade contract itself. The construction manager is the owner's agent, not the builder; the plumbing contractor's contract is with the county or the school district, not with the CM.
You can see the model in the paper. New Castle County selected its construction manager for the Newark library through a public RFP for “construction management — agency” services in October 2022, more than two years before the first trade bid. The Leach School pre-bid agenda says it in five words: all prime contracts with CSD. The contract form is the AIA A132–2019 owner–contractor agreement in its construction-manager-as-adviser edition, with the A232–2019 general conditions — both bound into the project manual.
Why it matters to a reader: because every trade contract is the public body's own contract, every one of them is a public document. The advertisement, the scope sheet, the addenda and the award notice are all published. That is what makes a page like this possible, and it is why a general-contractor job, where the primes are the GC's private subcontracts, leaves a much thinner public trail.
There is no single Delaware bid board. There are at least three homes, and a project can be in one without being in another:
Two more things hide in plain sight. Drawings may not be online at all. Delaware's public-records law lets an owner withhold plans whose publication could compromise public safety (the exemption sits in 29 Del. C. §10002); the Leach School filed one, so its biddable drawings are released only through the construction manager's plan room after a plans request. And the directory only shows what is open: once a deadline passes, a solicitation drops off the open list, and the award notice appears months later on the document server. The Groundwork board exists to put the building-relevant subset of all three homes on one page, re-verified by hand on a stated date.
A CM-agency project is bought as bid packages, each containing numbered prime contracts. There is no fixed shape. The Newark library went out in five sequential packs over five months, plus a late audio-visual package — demolition, sitework, concrete, plumbing and steel first; masonry, drywall, HVAC and electrical second; metals, siding, roofing and glass third; finishes, seating, window treatments and tele/data fourth; carpentry fifth — twenty-three contracts in all. The Leach School went out almost all at once: thirty prime contracts in one Package A, from sitework to testing-and-balancing, with two scopes re-bid in a Package B and one in a Package C.
Inside the project manual, Section 011100 — Summary of Work — carries a scope information sheet for each contract: the specification divisions it owns and a numbered list of everything else it must do, down to who spreads the topsoil and who tests it. Section 012100 lists allowances, 012200 unit prices, 012300 alternates — the Leach Package A carried eleven; its landscaping re-bid carries none. Read these three sections for your trade before anything else.
Addenda are the only way the documents change. A pre-bid meeting (“highly suggested but not mandatory” at the Leach School; mandatory for every New Castle County Newark library pack, where the addenda list who attended and is eligible to bid) produces questions; questions close about a week before the opening; each answer, revised bid form and re-issued sheet arrives as a numbered addendum, and the bid form makes you acknowledge every one. The Leach Package A ran to five addenda; the second moved the opening a week and to a different building, and re-issued the entire specification. Never bid from the advertisement alone.
Delaware's public works chapter, 29 Del. C. ch. 69, subchapter IV, sets the floor for every one of these contracts. The four provisions a bidder meets on every job, read from the Code:
A deposit — a bond or other security the section allows — equal to at least 10% of the bid, naming the owner as obligee. Advertisements add “plus a consent of surety.”
Bids are opened publicly, and the contractor and total bid price are read aloud. The advertisement names the place and the minute: 2:00 p.m. at 87 Reads Way; 3:00 p.m. in a high school's N3 Building. Late bids go back unopened.
To the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. Responsive means the bid followed the documents; responsible means the bidder can perform. Both words carry weight, and both are argued.
A bond equal to 100% of the contract price, with a payment bond alongside it, before the contract is signed. This is why a bonding agent is often the first professional a new public-works bidder meets.
When a scope draws no acceptable bid, it is re-bid as a new package: the Newark library re-advertised five finish and systems contracts in one round, then its tele/data scope a second time seven weeks later; the Leach School re-bid casework and electrical in January and is re-bidding landscaping now. A re-bid is ordinary, not a scandal — but it is a public signal that a scope was hard to price, and a second chance for a firm that missed the first round.
The chapter defines a “large public works contract” by a probable-cost threshold that the Contracting and Purchasing Advisory Council sets under § 6913, not by a figure written into the section — check the Council's current threshold rather than a number quoted from memory, including ours.
New Castle County sets a 32% small-business-enterprise participation goal on its construction contracts. The county's own fact sheet answers the question everyone asks: is the goal a requirement? No — but good-faith efforts are needed if a goal is not met, and those efforts must be documented. Prime bidders find certified small, minority-, women- and veteran-owned firms through the state's Office of Supplier Diversity; our certified-firms directory is that list for building trades, and GOODFAITH assembles the good-faith evidence.
Two claims that are false and still circulate: that a missed goal loses the bid (the county says it does not), and that certification alone satisfies the goal (it does not — the participation must be real and the record must show it).
The opening is the last thing the public reliably sees. A bid tabulation exists the same afternoon; whether it is posted depends on the owner. The owner's board approves awards, usually within weeks. The contract is signed once bonds and insurance certificates are in. A notice to proceed starts the clock on the pre-bid construction schedule — the Leach manual's runs from a November 2025 opening through steel, weather-tight, permanent power and occupancy to a first day of school in January 2028.
The state's award notice is the public confirmation, and it is slow: the Leach Package A contracts took effect February 8, 2026 and the notice naming the twenty-three firms was posted August 11, 2026. It lists firms, not amounts and not which firm holds which contract; the amounts live in the owner's board minutes. From there the trail runs through change orders, weekly certified payrolls and closeout — mostly out of public view unless someone assembles it, which is what a Groundwork project file is.
Everything on this page is drawn from two projects' documents and one chapter of the Code, all linked below. It is an explanation, not legal advice; where a number matters, the linked document wins.
Read on 2026-09-07 unless noted. The two project files carry their own full source lists.