Every domain but Sites is a sourced dataset. Sites is not one — it is the work of turning a requirement into a shortlist, which no public dataset answers.
Incentives
Programs a company could apply to — who runs them, what they require, and the record behind each claim.
- Source
- State and local program pages, statute and ordinance text, and agency publications, each item carrying the document it came from.
- How it was selected
- We work jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than sweeping the whole country: a state, then the cities and counties inside it that a project would actually deal with.
- What is outside this
- A program we have not read yet is simply absent — absence here is not evidence that no program exists. Terms change without notice, and the authoritative version is always the agency's own.
States we collect in
- Texas
- Louisiana
- Indiana
- Arizona
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
- Virginia
Agreements
Development agreements that were actually signed — who received what, on what terms.
- Source
- Texas Comptroller Chapter 380/381 disclosure; Louisiana Board of Commerce & Industry ITEP board agendas; comparable state disclosures elsewhere.
- How it was selected
- In Texas we do not choose jurisdictions at all: local governments are required by law to report these agreements to the Comptroller, and the Comptroller publishes the set. In states without such a filing duty we work from the state board's published proceedings instead.
- What is outside this
- Only agreements that carry a reporting duty appear. Incentives given in another form — a standalone TIF, a local grant, a negotiated package that was never filed — are not in the dataset. Some states have no such regime at all — where the main incentive is an automatic credit claimed on a tax return, there is no per-deal approval to publish, so there is nothing to collect rather than something we missed. An agreement is a record of what someone received in the past; it is not an indication that the same terms are available now.
States we collect in
- Texas
- Louisiana
- Indiana
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
- Virginia
Permits
Building permit records — what is being built, where, and by whom.
- Source
- Each city or county's own open-data publication of issued permits.
- How it was selected
- We read the jurisdictions that publish machine-readable permit data and that matter to the projects we work on. A city that does not publish, or publishes only as scanned paper, is not here.
- What is outside this
- Coverage is city by city, so a project in an unlisted jurisdiction is invisible to us even if it is large. Fields differ between publishers — some name the contractor and some do not — and a permit record is a record of construction, not a signal that an open bid exists.
Jurisdictions we read
- Austin
- Dallas
- San Antonio
- Nashville
- Memphis
- Chattanooga
- Tempe
- Maricopa County
- Louisville
- Bowling Green
- Virginia Beach
- Fairfax County
- Lynchburg
- Norfolk
- Lexington
- Arlington County
Contractors
Contractors registered to work in an area — trades and general construction.
- Source
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) licence records, and Comptroller registrations of construction businesses.
- How it was selected
- Drawn from the licensing and registration bodies themselves, then matched to the areas where we hold permit data so that a name can be read next to actual construction activity.
- What is outside this
- This is a list of who is registered, not a judgment of who is capable. It does not vouch for qualifications or quality, and it does not mean a contractor is available or interested. Verify licence status directly before selecting anyone. Phone numbers are published for only some licences.
Investments
Company investment and hiring announcements — who said they would invest how much, where, and hire how many.
- Source
- The state economic-development agency's own announcement list — the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) and the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development (CED).
- How it was selected
- We take each agency's full published list rather than choosing jurisdictions. We only collect states whose agency publishes such a list; other states are outside this domain, not empty.
- What is outside this
- An announcement is what a company said it planned at the time. It does not mean the investment was made or the jobs were filled, and it is not an incentive amount — incentive agreements are a separate domain. Only projects the agency itself announced are here, not all investment in the state.
Jurisdictions
The cities, counties, parishes and states behind everything else — and what each one has actually done.
- Source
- Derived from the records above rather than collected separately.
- How it was selected
- A jurisdiction enters our records when a program, an agreement or a permit names it. So the list grows out of the evidence rather than being decided in advance.
- What is outside this
- A jurisdiction with few records may simply be one we have not read yet. The count next to a name is the public record we have collected, not everything that jurisdiction has ever granted.
Sites
Turning a requirement into a shortlist you can act on — power, zoning, fire code, truck circulation, clear height and the rest.
- Source
- Not a dataset. The answers come from the jurisdictions, utilities and people involved in a specific project.
- How it was selected
- It is a domain of its own precisely because no public dataset answers it. What we bring is the datasets above plus the people who have built here.
- What is outside this
- Nothing here is pre-collected, so nothing here can be looked up. It is work done per project.