Guide
How to read a capital improvement plan
A capital improvement plan, or CIP, is a public multi-year schedule of the projects an agency intends to build, with an estimated cost and funding source for each year. Most cover five years and are adopted alongside the annual budget, which means the projects in year one are usually funded and heading to procurement within twelve months. Reading the CIP for every agency in your service area is the single highest-yield hour in public sector business development.
Where to find it
Look on the agency's finance or budget page for a document titled Capital Improvement Plan, Capital Improvement Program, Capital Budget, or, for school districts, Long-Range Facility Plan. State DOTs publish the equivalent as a Statewide Transportation Improvement Program, and regional planning organizations publish a Transportation Improvement Program covering federally funded local projects.
If it is not posted, ask the clerk or finance office. It is a public document and agencies routinely email it.
What each column tells you
A typical CIP line has five or six fields, and each one is a signal:
- Project name and description — the scope, usually one line, sometimes with a phase.
- Fiscal years — when design and construction dollars are programmed. Design money in the current year means a construction bid roughly a year out.
- Estimated cost — the planning number. Compare it against your minimum viable job size before spending any pursuit effort.
- Funding source — general fund, bond, grant, motor fuel tax, federal aid. Federal or state aid pulls in prevailing wage, DBE goals, and prequalification requirements.
- Status — planned, designed, or under construction. Anything marked planned or design underway is the pursuit window.
- Department — who owns the project and therefore who you talk to.
Read the narrative, not only the table
The front section of a CIP explains the assumptions: whether a bond referendum is planned, which projects depend on a grant award, what the agency deferred last cycle and why. Deferred projects are a strong signal — they typically resurface once funding recovers, and few competitors are watching for them.
Comparing this year's CIP to last year's is even more useful. A project that moved from year four to year two accelerated, and someone made that decision at a public meeting you can read.
Turning the plan into a pursuit list
Filter every CIP line by three tests: does it match a service line you actually deliver, is the estimated cost inside the range you can bond and staff, and is it in year one or two. What survives is your pursuit list.
For each surviving project, note the owning department, then find the program engineer or director in the staff directory. That is who to contact while contact is still permitted — before a solicitation exists.
The limits of a CIP
A CIP is a plan, not a commitment. Projects slip, grants fall through, and costs are revised. Treat year-one items as likely, years two and three as probable, and years four and five as directional. Confirm against board minutes and the adopted budget, which reflect what actually got funded.
Last reviewed August 2026
How Hank automates this
Hank reads capital improvement plans, adopted budgets, board minutes, and expiring contracts across the agencies you sell to, detects changes between publication cycles, and ranks each project against your service lines, geography, and contract size as a Great fit, Good fit, or Decent fit — with the owning department's contacts attached.
Common questions
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What is Hank?
Hank is how companies find, pursue, and win state and local government work. Every day it reads tens of thousands of sources — agency portals, board packets, budget approvals, capital plans, meeting minutes, and expiring contracts published by cities, counties, school districts, and state agencies — and surfaces what matters to your service lines in real time, often months before a solicitation posts. When the solicitation does post, Hank breaks it down into scope, key dates, submission requirements, evaluation criteria, and compliance items, names the people at the agency to contact, and drafts a first-pass proposal from your own past work. Every signal, contact, document, and pursuit stays in one place your team works out of.