WIL Federal Construction Awards · Research Brief · September 2026

Federal Construction Awards: Montana

Prime construction contracts awarded for performance in Montana, September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026

549 federal construction contracts were awarded for performance in Montana from September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026, carrying $476.4 million in obligations to date — 0.5% of the national total and rank 34 of 49 states — led by the Department of Transportation (26% of dollars).

Overview

This profile records the federal prime construction contracts awarded for performance in Montana — every contract of types A through D (definitive contracts, purchase orders, delivery orders, and BPA calls) coded to a construction NAICS (236 buildings, 237 heavy and civil engineering, 238 specialty trades) with a base obligation date from September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026. Dollar figures are the obligation to date on each award as published by USAspending at the time of the pull, not the ceiling value and not spending within the window. The measure is therefore "awards made in the window and what they have obligated so far"; it is not total federal construction spending in the state, which also includes obligations on awards made earlier. Sub-awards, grants, and state or local contracts are outside scope. This is a public-data profile: it describes where federal construction dollars were awarded, and makes no claim about labor availability, hiring conditions, or the workforce a project will require.

Table 1. Federal construction awards made in the window — Montana vs. United States
GeographyNew awardsObligated to dateMedian awardShare of US dollars
Montana549$476,378,700$109,8850.5%
United States (49 states + DC)38,650$90,724,163,991$100,841100%

Awards with a base obligation date in the window; dollars are obligations to date as of 2026-09-29. Alaska and Hawaii are not in the Lab's warehouse coverage and are excluded from the national figure. — Sources: USAspending

Montana · USAspending, 2024-09-29 to 2026-09-29
Obligated dollars by awarding agency
US dollars, millions. Six largest awarding agencies. Observed award records — not a spending forecast.

Scroll horizontally to read the full chart →

Obligated dollars by awarding agencyBar chart: Department of Transportation 123.5; Department of the Interior 89.3; Department of Defense 70.6; Department of Agriculture 66.9; General Services Administrat 43.3; Department of Health and Hum 39.3, on a 0–130 scale.0336598130Department ofTransportation123.5Department of theInterior89.3Department ofDefense70.6Department ofAgriculture66.9General ServicesAdministrat43.3Department ofHealth and Hum39.3

Source: USAspending.gov (U.S. Department of the Treasury), prime contract awards — construction NAICS 236/237/238, place of performance Montana, 2024-09-29 to 2026-09-29 · Methodology WIL-FCA-1.0 · Public federal award records. Dollar values are obligations to date on each award at the pull date; they are not contract ceilings and not spending within the window.

Table 2. Awards by awarding agency — Montana
Awarding agencyAwardsObligated to dateShare
Department of Transportation24$123,462,07225.9%
Department of the Interior128$89,259,17418.7%
Department of Defense76$70,574,42214.8%
Department of Agriculture214$66,940,77114.1%
General Services Administration5$43,340,9519.1%
Department of Health and Human Services51$39,310,0098.3%
Department of Veterans Affairs32$27,201,5525.7%
Department of Homeland Security16$15,726,8533.3%
Department of Energy3$562,8950.1%

Ten largest agencies by dollars. Agency is the awarding agency as recorded by USAspending. — Sources: USAspending

Table 3. Awards by construction segment (NAICS) — Montana
SegmentAwardsObligated to dateShare
Heavy and civil engineering (237)222$235,921,30849.5%
Construction of buildings (236)117$193,495,55840.6%
Specialty trade contractors (238)210$46,961,8349.9%

Segment from the award's primary NAICS code. — Sources: USAspending

Table 4. Awards by federal fiscal quarter of base obligation — Montana
Fiscal quarterAwardsObligated to date
FY2024 Q412$1,904,319
FY2025 Q119$13,877,878
FY2025 Q232$37,259,822
FY2025 Q355$94,067,589
FY2025 Q4129$65,644,402
FY2026 Q114$14,170,095
FY2026 Q278$86,882,103
FY2026 Q3112$67,880,981
FY2026 Q498$94,691,511

Federal fiscal year begins October 1. The first and last quarters shown are partial where the window boundary falls inside them. — Sources: USAspending

Table 5. Ten largest awards by obligation to date — Montana
RecipientAwarding agencyNAICSObligated to dateBase obligation date
Swank Enterprises, INC.General Services Administration236220$42,901,0892025-05-07
Paulsen Construction, LLCDepartment of the Interior236220$26,931,0632025-04-25
Aleut Construction LLCDepartment of Defense236220$26,370,0002026-03-03
Granite Construction CompanyDepartment of Transportation237310$24,540,7562026-08-28
M.a. Deatley Construction, INC.Department of Transportation237310$22,470,7272026-02-23
Bairco Construction INCDepartment of the Interior237110$18,573,6342026-04-13
Hamilton Construction CODepartment of Transportation237310$16,904,1082025-01-13
Koontz Electric Company, IncorporatedDepartment of Defense237130$13,987,7892026-01-30
Burke Electric, L.l.c.Department of the Interior237990$8,914,4112026-03-05
Shumaker Trucking & Excavating Contractors, INC.Department of Transportation237310$8,624,5532024-12-23

Recipient names as registered with the federal government (case normalized for display); each award is a public record on USAspending.gov. — Sources: USAspending

What the record shows

Montana received 549 new federal construction awards in the window, carrying $476.4 million obligated to date — 0.5% of the $90.72 billion national total across 38,650 awards, ranking 34 of 49 states. The Department of Transportation is the largest awarding agency by dollars ($123.5 million, 26%), followed by the Department of the Interior ($89.3 million). By segment, heavy and civil engineering leads at 50% of dollars. Award size is skewed: the median award is $109,885, while the ten largest awards carry 44% of the state's total; the single largest is $42.9 million to Swank Enterprises, INC. from the General Services Administration. These are observed award records; nothing here measures how hard the work will be to staff.

Method and limitations

Source: USAspending.gov, spending_by_award search API, pulled 2026-09-29 with date_type new_awards_only over the window 2024-09-29 to 2026-09-29; filters: award types A, B, C, D; NAICS 236xxx, 237xxx, 238xxx (31 six-digit codes); place of performance in Montana. Every page of results was retrieved (no result cap), and the rows are archived in the Lab's governed warehouse (workforce_intel.federal_construction_awards, source USASPENDING_FULL). Limitations: obligation-to-date values change as agencies modify awards, so figures are as of the pull date; place of performance is the primary location USAspending records and may differ from where work is physically performed for multi-site contracts; agency attribution follows the awarding (not funding) agency; recipient names are as registered in SAM. Fiscal quarters follow the federal fiscal year. This profile asserts where awards were made and their obligated value only — not workforce availability, not hiring conditions, not project outcomes.

State workforce context — Montana

A live public-signal read for Montana from the Lab's standing trackers — banded and directional, refreshed independently of this brief.

Workforce exposure
Moderate
Exposure movement
easing
Wage position
modestly below national medians
Federal-award momentum
Low · softening

Source: Workforce Exposure Index and federal-award momentum — public_reports (banded). Directional, banded read — not a forecast. Methodology v2 · last updated 2026-05-26. See Live metrics for the full charts.

Suggested citationWorkforce Intelligence Lab. (2026). Federal Construction Awards: Montana: Prime construction contracts awarded for performance in Montana, September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026 (Publication No. WIL-RB-2026.3-FCA-ST-MT, Version 1.0). WIL Federal Construction Awards.

Version 1.0 · Published 2026-10-28T19:00:00Z · Permanent ID WIL-RB-2026.3-FCA-ST-MT. This record is versioned; the URL is permanent and stable for citation.

Export citation (BibTeX · RIS)
BibTeX
@techreport{WILRB20263FCASTMT,
  title       = {Federal Construction Awards: Montana: Prime construction contracts awarded for performance in Montana, September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026},
  author      = {Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  institution = {Workforce Intelligence Lab},
  type        = {WIL Federal Construction Awards},
  number      = {WIL-RB-2026.3-FCA-ST-MT},
  year        = {2026},
  note        = {Version 1.0; methodology WIL-FCA-1.0},
  url         = {https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/federal-construction-awards-montana},
}
RIS
TY  - RPRT
AU  - Workforce Intelligence Lab
TI  - Federal Construction Awards: Montana: Prime construction contracts awarded for performance in Montana, September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026
PY  - 2026
PB  - Workforce Intelligence Lab
M1  - WIL-RB-2026.3-FCA-ST-MT
ET  - Version 1.0
UR  - https://wilinstitute.org/library/p/federal-construction-awards-montana
AB  - A public-record profile of federal prime construction contracts (NAICS 236, 237, and 238; contract types A–D) awarded for performance in Montana in the two-year window September 29, 2024 through September 29, 2026, drawn from USAspending. 549 new awards carrying $476.4 million obligated to date, ranking Montana 34 of 49 states by dollars. The Department of Transportation accounts for 26% of dollars; heavy and civil engineering is the largest NAICS segment at 50%. The ten largest awards carry 44% of the state's total. This is an observed record of awards, not a forecast of spending or a measure of workforce demand.
ER  -