When FEMA obligates a Public Assistance Project Worksheet, the federal share for that scope is reserved for a specific applicant — a city, county, tribe, state agency, or private non-profit. OpenFEMA then publishes the worksheet on Public Assistance Funded Projects Details v2. RebuildAlert reads that feed and emails contractors who watch the county.
That is a procurement signal, not a procurement event.
Obligation is not a bid advertisement
Local governments still have to follow their own purchasing rules. Some will advertise on a bid board. Some will piggyback an existing contract. Some will negotiate with the contractor already on site from the emergency period. An obligation tells you the applicant has federal dollars attached to a facility and a category. It does not tell you the bid date, the plan holders, or the award.
If you treat OpenFEMA like SAM.gov, you will wait for a listing that often never appears there. Public Assistance work is usually procured by the applicant, not by a federal contracting officer.
What the public record actually includes
For each obligated worksheet, OpenFEMA typically includes:
- Project title and damage category (A–G)
- Federal share obligated
- County and disaster number
- Applicant name
The matching Public Assistance Applicants v1 record — joined on applicantId and disasterNumber, because applicant IDs are reused across disasters — adds the mailing address. RebuildAlert keeps that street line in the product and in the digest. It is a public record, and it is the desk you write to.
What to do with an alert
Use the obligation to start a professional introduction: name the disaster, the facility language from the worksheet, and the category of work you perform. Ask how the applicant plans to procure. Do not claim FEMA sent you. RebuildAlert is not affiliated with FEMA or DHS.
The federal share calculator can turn an obligated dollar figure into a rough federal versus non-federal split. The category picker explains which trades usually follow each category. Neither tool is a bid estimate.
What RebuildAlert does not ingest
Category Z management costs, Individual Assistance, and NFIP claims are out of scope. So are unobligated worksheets still moving through FEMA review. If it is not an obligated PA project in categories A–G, it is not in this product.
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