# Florida Marine Construction Bid Prices and FDOT Bid Tabulations Index

[![DOI](https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.22636308.svg)](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22636308) [![License: CC BY 4.0](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-CC%20BY%204.0-lightgrey.svg)](LICENSE)

**Version 1.0.0 · released 2026-09-06 · CC BY 4.0 · compiled by [Mavlon](https://mavlon.co/data)**

Every bidder's unit price on marine and marine-adjacent pay items, floating docks, gangways, fixed platforms, boat ramps, steel sheet pile, bulkheads, fender systems, seawalls, boardwalks and piers, extracted from the Florida Department of Transportation's itemized bid tabulations, 2020-01-16 to 2026-07-16. Plus an index of every itemized tabulation harvested, with a direct link to FDOT's PDF.

Canonical pages, with key findings, tables and FAQ:

- https://mavlon.co/data/florida-marine-construction-bid-prices
- https://mavlon.co/data/fdot-bid-tabulations-index
- Catalog: https://mavlon.co/data

## Key findings

- In FDOT letting E4Y47 (Broward County, opened July 10, 2026), six bidders priced 4,000 square feet of aluminum floating dock between $110 and $300 per square foot; the gangway line ran $75 to $300 per square foot.
- Across 79 FDOT lettings from 2020 to 2026, 459 bidder prices for steel sheet pile have a median of $50 per square foot (range $0.01 to $483; the bottom of the range is penny bids on temporary sheet pile, which bidders use to shift money between items).
- The index lists 1,759 itemized FDOT bid tabulations (1,210 central-office lettings, 549 district lettings) from 2020-01-16 to 2026-07-16, each with a direct link to FDOT's PDF; 96 of them contain marine or marine-adjacent pay items.
- Floating dock, gangway and fixed platform pay items (FDOT 751-series) appear in exactly one letting in the entire harvest. Dock work bids through counties, cities, ports and FWC boat-ramp programs, not the DOT.

## Files

| File | Rows | What |
|---|---|---|
| `data/florida-marine-construction-bid-prices.csv` / `.json` | 962 | One row per (letting, pay item, bidder): unit price, extension, bidder rank and total, item code and description, category, quantity, unit, PDF link |
| `data/fdot-bid-tabulations-index.csv` / `.json` | 1,759 | One row per itemized tabulation: contract, letting date, district, counties, description, pages, PDF link, marine flag |
| `data/summary.json` | | Counts and per-category unit-price statistics |
| `docs/DATA_DICTIONARY.md` | | Field definitions, category rules, known limitations |
| `scripts/` | | Harvest (`download.py`, `district_download.py`), scan (`classify.py`, `fulltext_scan.py`), parse (`build_datasets.py`), publish (`gen_pages.py`) |

## Summary by category

| Category | Unit | Lettings | Items | Bidder prices | Min | Median | Max | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floating dock | SF | 1 | 1 | 6 | $110 | $240 | $300 | 2026-2026 |
| Gangway | SF | 1 | 1 | 6 | $75 | $166 | $300 | 2026-2026 |
| Fixed platform | SF | 1 | 1 | 6 | $78.17 | $140 | $275 | 2026-2026 |
| Steel sheet pile | LF | 5 | 5 | 25 | $172 | $450 | $880 | 2021-2022 |
| Steel sheet pile | SF | 79 | 103 | 459 | $0.01 | $50 | $483 | 2020-2026 |
| Bulkhead | CY | 32 | 34 | 145 | $0.01 | $1,680 | $16,975 | 2020-2025 |
| Bulkhead | LB | 29 | 30 | 143 | $0.01 | $2 | $41 | 2020-2025 |
| Bulkhead | LF | 9 | 9 | 42 | $48 | $248 | $1,219 | 2020-2025 |
| Bulkhead | SF | 4 | 4 | 17 | $28 | $85 | $280 | 2020-2025 |
| Fender system | LF | 5 | 5 | 10 | $710 | $924 | $3,200 | 2021-2026 |
| Fender system | MB | 6 | 11 | 48 | $12,000 | $34,914 | $97,000 | 2020-2026 |
| Seawall | CY | 1 | 1 | 5 | $1,823 | $3,395 | $4,825 | 2025-2025 |
| Other marine (751-series, mooring, dolphins) | LF | 1 | 1 | 4 | $59.53 | $115 | $200 | 2021-2021 |

Medians are across bidder prices. Lump-sum items are excluded from statistics and flagged. Prices are as bid, unadjusted for date.

## Method

FDOT publishes an itemized bid tabulation for every letting: a Vendor Ranking page (each bidder's total bid) and the tabulation proper (each bidder's unit price and extension on every pay item). Central-office tabulations were enumerated from FDOT's Cerberus file share by year and month; district tabulations from the district letting pages on fdot.gov. `build_datasets.py` parses the Vendor Ranking page for bidder names and totals, each tabulation block for line number, item code, quantity, unit and every bidder's unit price and extension, merges blocks (FDOT prints three bidders per page block), and classifies items by description. The E4Y47 rows were checked by hand against the PDF.

## Known limitations

- Prices are as bid, not awarded or as built; not adjusted for date or material-price era.
- The 751-series dock, gangway and platform items appear in exactly one letting (E4Y47, July 2026): an exhibit with n=6, not a market survey.
- Sheet pile prices mix temporary and permanent items and roadway, bridge and marine contexts; the item description distinguishes them.
- Vendor names are as printed by FDOT.

## Reproduce

```
pip install pdfplumber
python3 scripts/download.py            # central-office PDFs (needs raw/index.json from the Cerberus enumeration)
python3 scripts/district_download.py   # district PDFs from the saved district pages
python3 scripts/fulltext_scan.py       # flag tabulations with marine pay items
python3 scripts/build_datasets.py      # -> data/*.csv, data/*.json, data/summary.json
```

The raw PDFs (about 1 GB) are not in this repository; every row links to FDOT's copy.

## Cite

> Jain, A., & Mavlon, Inc. (2026). Florida Marine Construction Bid Prices and FDOT Bid Tabulations Index (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22636309

Concept DOI (always the latest version): [10.5281/zenodo.22636308](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22636308). Version DOI for this release: [10.5281/zenodo.22636309](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22636309).

See `CITATION.cff`. License: [CC BY 4.0](LICENSE). Attribute Mavlon as the compiler and FDOT as the source.

## Changelog

- **v1.0.0 (2026-09-06)**: first release. 962 price rows from 95 lettings; index of 1,759 tabulations, 2020-01-16 to 2026-07-16.

## About

[Mavlon](https://mavlon.co) builds AI quoting software for custom fabricators: it reads the bid package and drafts the quote in the shop's own pricing logic. These datasets are published so estimators, owners and researchers can check real prices against real lettings. Corrections: atishay@mavlon.co.