Most public-works bond statutes are a conversation between the contracting body and the prime contractor. Nevada’s reaches one level further down, and a general contractor who reads only the parts about its own bonds will miss the half that applies to everybody else on the job.
The threshold, and the exception in front of it
NRS 339.025 sets the trigger at $100,000, and it carves out a whole chapter before it starts:
“Before any contract, except one subject to the provisions of chapter 408 of NRS, exceeding $100,000 for any project for the new construction, repair or reconstruction of any public building or other public work or public improvement of any contracting body is awarded to any contractor, the contractor shall furnish to the contracting body the following bonds which become binding upon the award of the contract to the contractor”
Two things to hold. The bonds become binding upon the award, not upon execution of a contract document or upon a notice to proceed. And the chapter 408 exception is named before the rule — Nevada transportation work runs on its own chapter, and this section does not tell you what happens there.
Fixed by the body, floored at half
Both bonds in NRS 339.025 use the same construction:
“(a) A performance bond in an amount to be fixed by the contracting body, but not less than 50 percent of the contract amount, conditioned upon the faithful performance of the contract in accordance with the plans, specifications and conditions of the contract.”
“(b) A payment bond in an amount to be fixed by the contracting body, but not less than 50 percent of the contract amount.”
The operative words are fixed by the contracting body. The statute does not compute your penal sum; it constrains how low the body may go. As in Idaho, where the floor is eighty-five percent of the contract amount under Idaho Code § 54-1926, the number on your bond comes from the solicitation and the statute only tells you what it cannot be below.
Fifty percent is a low floor by national standards. Maine and North Dakota require the full contract amount; federal work requires 100 percent of the original contract price under FAR 28.102-2(b). Nevada permits a bond covering half the job — which means a Nevada payment bond claimant should establish the penal sum early, because on a job with several unpaid claimants the ceiling is doing real work.
The subcontractors bond too
This is the provision of NRS 339.025 that makes Nevada different, and it applies to State Public Works Division projects:
“If a general contractor has been awarded a contract, except one subject to the provisions of chapter 408 of NRS, by the State Public Works Division of the Department of Administration for any project for new construction, repair or reconstruction of any public building or other public work or public improvement, each of the subcontractors of the general contractor who will perform work on the contract that exceeds $50,000 or 1 percent of the proposed project, whichever amount is greater, shall furnish a bond to the Division in an amount to be fixed by the Division.”
Read the NRS 339.025 test carefully, because it is not a flat figure. A subcontractor is caught at $50,000 or 1 percent of the proposed project, whichever amount is greater. On a small project the fixed figure governs and only substantial subcontracts are caught. On a large one the percentage takes over and the effective threshold rises with the job — on a very large project a subcontract well into six figures can sit outside it.
Note also who the bond runs to: the Division, not the general contractor. This is not the prime requiring security down its own chain as a matter of contract. It is the public body requiring bonds from parties it has no contract with, in an amount the Division fixes.
For a general contractor assembling a bid, that is a real constraint on the subcontractor list. A low number from a sub who cannot bond is not a low number.
Two notices, not one
Nevada’s claim mechanics carry a preliminary notice that the federal Miller Act does not have, and it comes very early.
A claimant with a direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor but none with the prime may bring an action on the payment bond only:
“(a) If the claimant has, within 30 days after furnishing the first of such materials or performing the first of such labor, served on the contractor a written notice which shall inform the latter of the nature of the materials being furnished or to be furnished, or the labor performed or to be performed, and identifying the person contracting for such labor or materials and the site for the performance of such labor or materials; and (b) After giving written notice to such contractor within 90 days from the date on which the claimant performed the last of the labor or furnished the last of the materials for which the claimant claims payment.”
The conjunction is and. Both notices are conditions, and the first one runs from your first delivery rather than your last.
That inverts the usual habit. Under 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(2) and in most states a claimant thinks about notice when payment stops. In Nevada the first notice is due 30 days after you start, long before anything has gone wrong — so it is a mobilisation task, not a collections task. A supplier who begins work in March and first considers the bond in September has missed a condition that was satisfiable on day one.
Where suit goes
“Every action on a payment bond as provided in NRS 339.035 shall be brought in the appropriate court of the political subdivision where the contract for which the bond was given was to be performed.”
Venue follows performance, as it does federally under 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(3) and in South Carolina under S.C. Code § 11-35-3030.
No bid bond, but a protest costs twenty-five percent
The bonds above come from NRS chapter 339. The obvious next question is what Nevada asks for at the bid, and the answer is unusual enough to be worth stating as a finding rather than an omission: nothing.
We read NRS chapter 338, the public works chapter, in full. It contains no bid-security requirement — no bid security, no bid bond, no bid deposit, no certified check, no guaranty. That is a read result, not an unchecked box, and it is why this page does not send you looking for a Nevada bid bond percentage: there is no state one in this chapter to find.
What the chapter does secure is the other end of the process. Under NRS 338.142, a person who files a notice of protest about the awarding of a contract must post security for it:
“…post a bond with a good and solvent surety authorized to do business in this state or submit other security, in a form approved by the public body … A bond posted or other security submitted with a notice of protest must be in an amount equal to the lesser of: (a) Twenty-five percent of the total value of the bid submitted by the person filing the notice of protest; or (b) Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Read the two facts together and Nevada points the opposite way from every other state we have written up. Bidding costs a Nevada contractor nothing in security. Contesting an award costs it the lesser of 25 percent of its own bid or $250,000, under NRS 338.142 — a far larger share of the bid than the states that take security at the letting ask for, and aimed at a different person.
That is a deliberate design, and it is aimed at you only if you lose and object. The cap matters as much as the percentage: on a large bid the two hundred fifty thousand dollar limb is the one that binds, so the exposure stops climbing with the size of the job. On a smaller bid the percentage governs.
The practical reading for a Nevada bidder is that the surety conversation you need before bidding is about the performance and payment bonds, not about a bid bond — and that if you are considering protesting an award, the bond behind the protest is a real instrument that has to be underwritten like any other, on a clock set by the protest deadline rather than by the letting.
What NRS 339 leaves to chapter 408
The section carves out contracts subject to chapter 408 of NRS twice — once in the threshold and once in the subcontractor provision. We have not read that chapter, so this page says nothing about bonds on the work it governs, and a contractor on Nevada transportation work should not read the figures above as applying.
Section 339.025 also does not give the limitation period for suit on the bond. The 30-day and 90-day notices above are conditions on the right of action; the deadline for bringing it is elsewhere, and it is the part that decides a late claim.
