Guide
The construction project lifecycle, stage by stage
A commercial construction project moves through six recognizable stages: pre-design, planning, design, permitting, bidding, and construction. Each stage closes a set of decisions. Knowing which stage a project is in tells you whether your scope is still open, who currently holds the decision, and whether a call today is early, on time, or too late.
Pre-design
The owner has a need and usually a site, but not a building. Budget ranges are rough, program is being argued about, and feasibility studies are underway. Land may have just been purchased or rezoning requested.
Who decides here: the owner or developer, sometimes an owner's representative. What is still open: everything — delivery method, design team, budget priorities. This is the stage where general contractors and design firms compete on relationship rather than price.
Planning
The project takes shape on paper. Site plans go to a planning commission, financing is arranged, and the design team is selected. The project starts appearing in public agendas and local coverage.
Who decides here: owner or developer plus the architect. What is still open: systems, materials, and the general contractor in many cases. Suppliers and manufacturers who want to be specified should be in the conversation now, not later.
Design
Schematic design becomes design development becomes construction documents. Specifications are written. This is the single most consequential stage for anyone selling a product, because a spec written around your competitor's system is a loss you never see coming.
Who decides here: architect and engineers, with owner sign-off. What is still open: product selections, trade scopes, and the bid list the GC will assemble.
Permitting
Drawings go to the building department. Applications are public and list the owner, the valuation, and frequently the contractor of record. Timelines firm up because permit review has a schedule.
Who decides here: mostly the design team resolving comments. What is still open: subcontractor and supplier selection. This is the last comfortable moment to reach a general contractor before its bid list closes.
Bidding
The general contractor is pricing the job, or the owner is comparing GCs. Invitations to bid go out to a list somebody built weeks earlier. Response windows are short.
Who decides here: the general contractor, on trades and materials; the owner, on the GC. What is still open: price, essentially. If this is the first time you have heard of the project, you are bidding blind against firms who have been on it for months.
Under construction
Work is underway. Scope changes, late trades, and finish packages still get bought, and the owner is starting to think about who operates and maintains the building. For service providers, equipment rental, and finish trades, this stage is not the end of the opportunity — it is the beginning.
Last reviewed August 2026
How Hank automates this
Hank tracks every commercial project through all six stages and updates the record daily as a job moves, so your feed reflects where each project actually stands rather than where it was when it was first found. Filter to the stages that matter for what you sell, and reach the owner, developer, general contractor, or architect while the decision is still open.
See how Hank handles this →Common questions
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What is Hank?
Hank helps companies find, pursue, and win construction and services work — public and private. On the public side, Hank reads more than 50,000 sources nationwide: active solicitations plus the budgets, board records, capital plans, grants, awards, forecasts, and expiring contracts that reveal work earlier. On the private side, Hank adds more than 2,500 new commercial projects every month, researched and confirmed by people and updated daily as each job moves from pre-design through planning, design, permitting, bidding, and construction. Hank matches both records to your services, territory, and project size; reads a published bid in 1–3 minutes; names the agency, owner, developer, general contractor, and architect contacts to call; answers pursuit questions; and, where enabled, assembles an editable proposal draft from your approved company knowledge. Your team gets 6–7 hours back each week and keeps every signal, source, contact, document, conversation, and pursuit in one connected record.