Northwest Public-Works Bid Digest: Week of August 24, 2026

This is our weekly roundup of open public-works bid opportunities across the Northwest that matter to electrical and utility contractors — transmission and distribution work, substations, fiber and plant electrical, and the material and service packages that go with them. We update it every Monday. Every listing below came off the owner's own solicitation page, links back to it, and had a bid due date in the future when we published. Some weeks that's a dozen jobs; some weeks it's a handful. This is a handful week, and we'd rather give you five verified ones than pad the list.

It's a fast one, too. Two of these close inside 48 hours — if you're not already working them, treat them as reference — but the Tacoma Power contract runs to mid-September and there's real runway on the two September 1 jobs. We checked the usual WA/OR/ID portals plus Montana's state and university boards; nothing electrical with a live date turned up in Montana this week, so if you work east of the divide, this one's thin for you. Here's what's open.

This Week at a Glance

Project	Agency	Location	Bid Due
Wood Pole Inspection, Test & Treatment (PT26-0181F)	Tacoma Power	Tacoma, WA	Sep 15, 2026, 11:00 AM PT
Trenching / Boring — MacArthur St & Allendale Dr	Columbia River PUD	St. Helens, OR	Sep 1, 2026, 3:30 PM PT
Microduct Drop Installation, Deep (IFP-26-26)	Idaho Falls Power	Idaho Falls, ID	Sep 1, 2026, 1:30 PM MT
Food Quality Assurance Lab Fire Alarm (26030)	Idaho Div. of Public Works	Twin Falls, ID	Aug 26, 2026, 2:00 PM MT
Low Voltage Service Contract (DPW26-858D–860D)	Boise State University / Idaho DPW	Boise, ID	Aug 25, 2026

Wood Pole Inspection, Test & Treatment (PT26-0181F) — Tacoma Power

Tacoma Power's Transmission & Distribution division has a services contract out for wood-pole inspection, testing, and decay treatment across its system. It's a multi-year maintenance package — the solicitation carries a roughly $2.15 million estimate over a four-year term — aimed at contractors who run pole-inspection and groundline-treatment crews rather than at construction bidders.

• Due: Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 11:00 AM PT, spec PT26-0181F. A pre-bid meeting is referenced in the documents and held over Microsoft Teams — confirm the date and dial-in in the solicitation before you commit.
• Scope: Inspection of wood utility poles, testing, and treatment of decay for Tacoma Power's T&D system.
• Source: City of Tacoma request for bids PT26-0181F

Worth checking: Confirm the prequalification requirement first — Tacoma Power maintains a prequalified list for distribution, transmission, and substation work, and prequal is generally expected to be in place when the solicitation is advertised. Because it's a multi-year, unit-priced maintenance contract, read for the estimated annual pole counts, the treatment specification and any warranty on treated poles, and how mobilization and travel across the territory get paid. Confirm the bid-security and performance-bond requirements, Washington prevailing wage (L&I intent/affidavit filing generally applies), and any traffic-control constraints for poles in occupied right-of-way.

Trenching / Boring — MacArthur Street & Allendale Drive — Columbia River PUD

Columbia River PUD, out of St. Helens, has an underground package open for trenching and directional boring on MacArthur Street and Allendale Drive. This is underground utility work — the excavation and conduit side of a distribution job — and a clean fit for an underground contractor working the lower Columbia.

• Due: Tuesday, September 1, 2026, 3:30 PM PT.
• Scope: Trenching and boring at two St. Helens locations. Pull the full package for the conduit runs, restoration limits, and whether the PUD is setting the vaults and pulling cable or that's in your scope.
• Source: Columbia River PUD bid documents

Worth checking: On a trench-and-bore package the money is in the ground and the restoration, so confirm the bore lengths and depths, the soil and rock assumptions, and whether potholing and locates are yours or the district's. Read for surface-restoration standards on city streets (patch versus grind-and-overlay), any franchise or ROW permit conditions, and the conduit/duct-bank spec. As an Oregon PUD job, expect BOLI prevailing wage and a bid-security requirement — verify the percentage and the bonding in the documents, and check the substantial-completion date and any liquidated damages.

Microduct Drop Installation, Deep (IFP-26-26) — Idaho Falls Power

Idaho Falls Power, the city's municipal utility, still has its deep microduct drop package open. It covers individual microduct drop installation at depths greater than 18 inches for the Idaho Falls Fiber broadband buildout — underground/fiber work on a unit-price basis.

• Due: Tuesday, September 1, 2026, 1:30 PM MT, bid IFP-26-26.
• Scope: Install individual microduct for a broadband drop deeper than 18 inches. (The companion residential-install package, IFP-26-25, has already come off the board — this deep-drop package is the one still open.)
• Source: idahofallsidaho.gov bids

Worth checking: Confirm whether you're pricing a fixed quantity or a term/unit-price contract against estimated volumes — that drives how you carry mobilization, locates, and restoration. Idaho has no state prevailing-wage law, but broadband buildouts are frequently grant-funded (BEAD and similar), and federal money can pull in Davis-Bacon wage determinations — read the documents for any wage rate before you bid it as private-rate work. Pin down the boring-versus-trenching assumption at depth, the restoration standard, and the Idaho Public Works Contractor License and bonding requirements. Full documents are on the city's QuestCDN plan room linked from the bids page.

Food Quality Assurance Lab Fire Alarm (Project 26030) — Idaho Division of Public Works

The Idaho Division of Public Works still has its fire-alarm project advertised for the Food Quality Assurance Lab at the College of Southern Idaho campus in Twin Falls — but the clock's nearly out. It's low-voltage electrical, a small clean state job for a licensed electrical contractor, with a state estimate of $118,125. We flagged it last week; this is the last call before it closes.

• Due: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 2:00 PM MT, sealed to the Division of Public Works, 502 N. 4th St., PO Box 83720, Boise, ID 83720-0072, for DPW Project 26030.
• Scope: Install a new fire-alarm system — detection and notification — for the existing Food Quality Assurance Laboratory (Department of Agriculture). Site-access coordination with Ag facilities is required.
• Source: dpw.idaho.gov/construction

Worth checking: A bid bond of 5% of the total bid (including add alternates) is required, and an Idaho Public Works Contractor's License is required to bid. The pre-bid conference is behind you now, so if you didn't walk the site, lean on the drawings and call the DPW coordinator rather than assuming panel and device conditions. Read for detection and notification device counts, head-end and panel type, and any occupied-facility phasing or after-hours acceptance testing. Documents are available from the design professional for a refundable deposit, or through the Idaho AGC plan room.

Low Voltage Service Contract (DPW26-858D–860D) — Boise State University

Boise State, through the Idaho Division of Public Works, is advertising a low-voltage service contract — an on-call/term arrangement for low-voltage electrical work on campus (structured cabling, communications, and related systems rather than a single fixed project). It's a short-fuse advertisement, so this is one to jump on only if you already do this work for the campus or are set up to.

• Due: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 (project numbers DPW26-858D through DPW26-860D). Confirm the exact time and submission method on the advertisement.
• Scope: Term low-voltage electrical/communications service work for Boise State facilities.
• Source: Boise State current project advertisements

Worth checking: On a term service contract the terms matter more than the scope — read for the contract duration and renewal options, whether it's a unit-price/labor-rate schedule or task-order based, insurance and bonding, and the Idaho Public Works Contractor's License requirement. Confirm how work is authorized and paid (task orders, not-to-exceed), and reach the coordinators on the advertisement fast given the window.

Also Open, Worth a Call

Okanogan County PUD has a Loup 115 Line — Maclean insulators call for bids listed as active on its bid invitations page — 115kV polymer insulators for the Loup transmission line, a furnish-and-deliver material buy for line-material suppliers. The summary page doesn't post the due date, so confirm the deadline and reel/quantity details with Roy Schwilke at (509) 422-8484 or roys@okpud.org before you build it. (The separate 336.4 ACSR conductor buy, bid 471-26, closes Monday at 1:30 PM PT — effectively today — so it's off this list.)

Before You Chase These

Five verified, and the calendar is why it's five and not twelve: a lot of the summer's Northwest utility work has already closed, and short-fuse material and service packages open and close inside a week or two. That's the case for watching this weekly — the Boise State term contract and the Okanogan insulators are exactly the kind of thing you miss if you're not looking every Monday.

Dates and times above were verified against each owner's own solicitation page the day we published, but addenda move targets — always confirm the current due date, submission method, and any pre-bid requirement on the source page before you build your bid.

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If you're bidding one of these, we can turn the solicitation into a full AI bid brief — bonds, prevailing wage, owner-furnished equipment, submittal windows, and the rest — at deadfront.ai; see real example briefs for how they read.