The apparent low bidder can still be displaced before final award. A bid that looked lowest at opening may turn out non-responsive (a missing bond, the wrong form, an unsigned page). The bidder may also be found non-responsible on financial capacity, licensing, or track record. Many agencies formally announce the apparent low bidder, then give other bidders a short window (sometimes just a few business days) to protest that determination before award.
Published bid tabs typically list every bidder in apparent-low-bidder order. Because bid tabs record who came in as apparent low bidder across hundreds of public projects, they also show who is actively bidding a given scope, who tends to win it, and at what price. Nonlinear reads bid tabs at scale to build that picture, rather than treating each bid opening as an isolated data point.
