The one thing this will never tell you
Two lists sit behind this product and they are not treated the same way, which is the whole design.
- The federal payment-bond statute — checked, and allowed to say what happens5 sentences, fetched from the published United States Code (40 U.S.C. §§ 3131 and 3133, United States Code 2023 Edition), quoted word for word, and saved next to the rule. On every build all 5 of them are searched for again, character for character, in our saved copy. One mismatch and this page does not build. Because it is checked, it is allowed to tell you what the law gives you.
- The 13 kinds of clause — found and quoted, and never explainedThis list is our own writing, from how the trade talks about these clauses. Nobody has verified it and nobody is going to: what a clause does to you is a question of contract law, of your state, and of the other ninety pages. So this half may never say what a clause means. It finds it, quotes your own words back at you, says which line, and hands you the question to ask. That is the whole of it.
That second switch is off on purpose and it is checked before this page is written. If somebody ever marks that list verified, this page stops building rather than quietly starting to give legal opinions.
What the law actually says40 U.S.C. §§ 3131 and 3133, United States Code 2023 Edition
A subcontractor on federal work who does not get paid has a claim on a bond the main contractor had to post. These are the 5 sentences that say so, out of the published law.
| In plain words | The text itself | Where |
|---|---|---|
| On federal building work worth more than $100,000 the main contractor has to put up a payment bond before the contract is awarded. That bond is what you get paid out of if they do not pay you. | Before any contract of more than $100,000 is awarded for the construction, alteration, or repair of any public building or public work of the Federal Govern ment, a person must furnish to the Government the following bonds, which become binding when the contract is awarded | 40 U.S.C. § 3131(b) |
| You can sue on that bond once you have been unpaid for 90 days after your last day of work or last delivery. | that has not been paid in full within 90 days after the day on which the person did or performed the last of the labor or furnished or supplied the material for which the claim is made may bring a civil action on the payment bond | 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(1) |
| If your contract is with another subcontractor rather than with the main contractor, you must give the MAIN contractor written notice within 90 days of your last day of work. Miss that and the bond claim is gone. | A person having a direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor but no contractual relationship, express or implied, with the contractor furnishing the payment bond may bring a civil action on the payment bond on giving written notice to the contractor within 90 days from the date on which the person did or performed the last of the labor or furnished or supplied the last of the material for which the claim is made | 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(2) |
| The claim has to be filed within one year of your last day of work. | An action brought under this subsection must be brought no later than one year after the day on which the last of the labor was performed or material was supplied by the person bringing the action | 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(4) |
| A clause in the bid package asking you to give up your bond rights before you start work does not hold. The law says a waiver only counts if it is in writing, signed by you, AND signed after you have already done the work. | A waiver of the right to bring a civil action on a payment bond required under this subchapter is void unless the waiver is— (1) in writing; (2) signed by the person whose right is waived; and (3) executed after the person whose right is waived has furnished labor or material for use in the performance of the contract | 40 U.S.C. § 3133(c) |
And it only goes on your sheet when it actually applies: the package says the work is federal AND names a value over $100,000. The example below is private work, so it is left off entirely — you can see the product refusing to attach it. Sending somebody looking for a bond that does not exist is the worst thing this could do.
The 13 clauses it looks for, and the question each one hands youour own words, verified by nobody
These are the 13 kinds of clause we look for. The middle column is the whole product: not what the clause means, but the question to put to whoever you ask. Those questions are printed here exactly as they are written in the rules file, and the build checks that word for word — a question rewritten on the way to a page is a question nobody checked.
| What people call it | The question it hands you | In the example below |
|---|---|---|
| Payment tied to the owner paying | Does this say you only get paid once somebody else has been paid, and is there any outside time limit on that at all? | found |
| No money for being delayed | If the job runs six weeks late through no fault of yours, does this give you extra time only, or extra money as well? | found |
| A fixed sum per day late | What is the daily figure, who decides the job is late, and is your share of it capped at anything? | found |
| The main contract's terms land on you | Have you been given a copy of the main contract this points at, and have you read the parts that now bind you? | not found here |
| You cover their losses | Does this cover claims caused by somebody else's negligence, and does your insurance cover what you have just promised? | found |
| Neither side can claim knock-on losses | Which side of this is protected, and are the losses you would actually suffer on the protected side or the unprotected one? | found |
| Part of every payment held back | What percentage is held back, and what exactly has to happen before it is released to you? | found |
| Work furnished or done by somebody else | Who furnishes it, who installs it, and who carries the cost if it arrives late or wrong? | found |
| You own how the work gets done | Who decides how the work gets done, and if they decide it, who carries the cost when that way of doing it takes longer? | found |
| They can end it for no reason | If they end the job early, what are you paid for what you have already bought, built or ordered? | not found here |
| Money up front to bid at all | How much, in what form, and by what date - and is that date earlier than the bid date? | found |
| How long you are on the hook after handover | How long is the period, when does it start, and what does it cover beyond your own workmanship? | not found here |
| Giving up your claim on the payment bond | What exactly are you being asked to give up, when are you being asked to sign it, and is this federal, state or private work? | not found here |
“Not found” never means “not in your contract”. a clause type we did not find is one we did not find. Contracts say the same thing in a hundred wordings and ours is a list of the common ones, so this is never a report that the clause is not in your contract
A worked example, on a package we made upinvented package, real reader
Every word of the package below is invented. Nobody sent it to us. It is written to look like the real thing: 730 words, 17 numbered sections, page marks, and the clause language that turns up in every subcontract. Read for the electrical trade, at the moment this page was built.
| Bucket | How many | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| In your scope | 4 | Numbered for your trade, and it reads like your work. |
| Somebody else’s section, your work | 4 | This is where bids go short. |
| We cannot tell | 0 | Our two readings disagreed, so we are not picking one for you. |
We never say something is not yours. A hundred-page package leaves things out on purpose, and “we did not find it” is a different sentence from “it is not there”.
Somebody else’s section, your workthe bucket the product exists for
4 places in that package sit under somebody else’s section number and describe electrical work anyway. Sleeves set by the concrete trade. Conduit under the communications section. Fire alarm wiring under safety and security. Each one is a line an electrical bid prices at zero unless somebody reads all seven pages.
| Where it sits | Your document’s own words | Why it is here | Found at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section 01 33 — Submittal Procedures | 01 33 00 Submittal Procedures Shop drawings for all electrical distribution equipment shall be submitted for review no later than 30 October 2026. Long lead equipment releases shall follow within ten working days of submittal approval. | this is section 01 33 - General requirements - which lands on every trade on the job, yours included | line 63, page 3 |
| Section 03 30 — Cast-in-Place Concrete | Sleeves and embedded conduit sleeves through structural slabs are furnished and set under this Section, coordinated with the electrical trade. | this is section 03 30 - Concrete - and it talks about your work. Work is put in other trades' sections on purpose, and this is where a bid goes short | line 76, page 4 |
| Section 27 10 — Structured Cabling | 27 10 00 Structured Cabling Provide backbone pathway, sleeves and conduit for the structured cabling system. | this is section 27 10 - Communications - and it talks about your work. Work is put in other trades' sections on purpose, and this is where a bid goes short | line 105, page 6 |
| Section 28 31 — Fire Detection and Alarm | Line voltage wiring, conduit and raceway for the fire alarm system is included in this Section and shall be coordinated with the lighting circuits. | this is section 28 31 - Electronic safety and security - and it talks about your work. Work is put in other trades' sections on purpose, and this is where a bid goes short | line 115, page 7 |
Every quote above was searched for again at the exact offset the reader wrote down, in the document itself. One quote that cannot be re-found holds the whole sheet — not that line, the whole sheet. A sheet is only worth anything if every line on it can be found.
What the reader found in itthis build, not last week
| What we counted | In this package |
|---|---|
| Numbered sections in the package | 17 |
| Numbered for the electrical trade | 4 |
| Somebody else’s section, electrical work | 4 |
| Our two readings disagreed | 0 |
| Clause types present, of 13 | 9 |
| Quoted sentences under the clause types | 11 |
| Quoted sentences in total, every one re-found at its offset | 20 |
| Dated deadlines found | bid due 2026-09-12 |
| Dates that contradict each other | 0 |
| Is this federal work? | no |
The federal bond rights are not on this example, and that is the point. nothing in this package says the work is federal, so the federal bond rules are left off your sheet entirely
The 31 trade divisions, counted and not listedno licence read
The reader works out which numbered sections belong to your trade from a list of 31 trade divisions — concrete, masonry, electrical, and so on. That list is not printed on this page, and the reason is not that it is secret.
- It is our own recollection, not the published standardThese division numbers and names are written from general trade knowledge and have not been checked against the published standard. They are used only to decide WHERE to read in your document. Nothing on your sheet is a claim about what a division number means - every line is a quote from your own document, with its location.
- And nobody here has read who publishes the real oneThe licence pre-flight of 24 August 2026 read the terms of one publisher for this product — the U.S. Government Publishing Office, for the statute above. It never looked at the division standard. No permission read means no list printed. That is a door somebody can open by reading a licence, not by making a decision.
Where the words on this page came from
- The statute, quoted in full — and we may quote itThe publisher of the United States Code says so in writing, in a notice we fetched and read on 2026-08-24: “The intent of the section is to place in the public domain all work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. § 101 as work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of the person's official duties. By virtue of the foregoing, public documents can generally be reprinted without legal restriction.” Credit is customary, not required.
- The clause list — ours, and unverified on purposeWritten here, from general trade knowledge. There is no published document that says which clauses are the dangerous ones, which is exactly why no item on it may ever produce a statement about what a clause does.
- The example package — ours, and worthless as dataWritten for this page. No contractor sent it, it describes no real project, and it names no company and no person.
- Nobody’s name is on this page, and that is locked rather than screenedEvery word of data above came out of a file we wrote, and that file is pinned by its checksum before this page is built. Point this page at a real bid package and it stops building — because reprinting a stranger’s document in full, with whatever names are in it, is a decision for a person. We do not screen the words instead: the estate’s person-detector grades a cell that is meant to hold a name, and on plain prose it reads ‘bid bond’ and ‘liquidated damages’ as readily as it reads a real one.
There is nothing to buy here yet
No pay button on this one yet. Email operations@ustechautomations.com. There is no address to send a bid package to and we are not pretending there is one. The reader above is working code and the statute behind it is re-checked on every build; neither of those is a service you can use today. If you want to be told when it is one, or if you think we have read it wrong, say so.
Email us about this pageThe example package on this page is ours. The statute is quoted from the published United States Code and re-checked against our saved copy every time this page is built.