Committee reviews Alabama Builds website, weighs moving public-works notices off newspapers

A legislative interim committee on Nov. 4 reviewed contractor feedback on Alabama Builds, the state’s centralized website for public-works advertisements, and began shaping report recommendations for how public-works notices should be handled going forward.

Committee members said contractors are “very thankful that there is a centralized website,” and noted several near-term feature requests, including trade-specific search filters and the ability for contractors to sign up for notices for particular trades. “It’d be really great if you could click … a list of kind of trades that this will encompass,” one committee member relayed, quoting contractor feedback.

The committee heard that early adopters cheered the platform’s $25 flat posting fee. “The $25 is pretty pretty good, I think,” one member said. Reported usage so far includes about 14 posted advertisements, roughly 60 account holders and more than 100 notification sign-ups; staff encouraged awarding authorities and owners to begin posting so traffic and reach increase.

DCM real property staff told the committee they are drafting a detailed requirements document for State Business Systems that will describe desired phase 2 functionality. State Business Systems’ first estimate was a January–April window for phase 2 work once requirements are received, though a committee member cautioned, “we are going to start, the planning and phasing process January 1, so it will actually roll out sometime after that.”

Members discussed the site’s optional rollout and the possibility of making use mandatory later. One speaker explained the initial option was intentional to avoid overwhelming finance and to allow public owners to ramp up: the site “is optional … we didn’t want to immediately require that of all of our public owners at once.” Several members said a medium-term recommendation could be to move toward mandatory use after the site has been in operation and kinks are fixed.

The committee discussed a real-world example in which the website prevented a delay. An engineer said a county newspaper’s notification e-mail went to the newspaper’s junk mail and a scheduled printed notice did not run; because the project also was posted on Alabama Builds and the site’s safe-harbor provision applied, the project proceeded. A committee member said the group interpreted the statute’s newspaper posting requirement as three separate days on three different weeks (not a continuous 21-day posting), a reading that allowed the project to continue.

The chair reported work has started on a draft report that will document history, the relevant act (referred to in the meeting as Act 2025-383) and the committee’s process. The group discussed short-term steps (improving site features, user guidance and metrics tracking), medium-term steps (considering a timeline to require site use) and long-term issues (a comprehensive review of all public-notice requirements in light of declining local newspapers).

Committee members asked staff to gather additional evidence for the report, including visitor metrics for the site, examples of projects ‘‘saved’’ by the website, average advertising costs from agencies such as ALDOT and community colleges, and comparisons with other states (AGC was suggested as a possible source for a state-by-state matrix). One member noted a precedent for including voluntary stakeholder comments in an appendix or index to the report.

The committee set its next meeting for Dec. 1 and the chair said a draft report will be circulated in advance for detailed discussion.