North Dakota’s public-improvement bond section is short, and two of its choices set it apart from every other state we have read: the size of the contract that triggers it, and the moment the bond has to exist.
Two hundred fifty thousand dollars
“Unless otherwise provided under this chapter, a governing body authorized to enter a contract for the construction of a public improvement in excess of two hundred fifty thousand dollars shall take from the contractor a bond before permitting any work to be done on the contract.”
That is the highest single public-works bond threshold in our reading of the 48 states. For comparison, Pennsylvania’s general provision bites above five thousand dollars (8 P.S. § 193) and Idaho’s at fifty thousand (Idaho Code § 54-1926). North Dakota sits fifty times above the first of those.
The practical consequence is a large band of North Dakota public work — genuinely substantial projects — on which this section requires nothing. That is a deliberate legislative choice about where the administrative burden of bonding is worth carrying, and it means a contractor asking “is this job bonded” in North Dakota is asking a question with a high bar.
Note also the opening qualifier: “Unless otherwise provided under this chapter”. The section is not the only rule in its own chapter, and it says so first.
The duty is on the body, and it bites before the work
Most state bond statutes are written at the contractor: the contractor shall furnish. North Dakota writes it at the governing body: it shall take from the contractor a bond, and it must do so “before permitting any work to be done on the contract.”
Two things follow from that phrasing.
The timing is tied to permission to work rather than to award or to execution of the contract. Maine’s bonds are furnished before the contract is awarded (14 M.R.S. § 871); Idaho’s become binding on execution (Idaho Code § 54-1926). North Dakota’s attaches to the moment the body lets anybody on site.
And the obligation sits with the public body. A contractor who begins work without a bond has a problem, but the section describes it as the body’s failure to take one.
The amount, stated without a percentage
“The bond must be for an amount equal at least to the price stated in the contract.”
The full contract price, as a floor. No percentage appears — which puts North Dakota with Maine (“the full contract amount”) and Indiana, whose statute reaches one hundred percent without ever using the word, rather than with the states that name a fraction.
“At least” matters. The body may require more, and the statute constrains only the bottom. As in Idaho, that means the penal sum on your bond comes from the solicitation and not from the statute; what the statute tells you is how low it cannot go.
A separate envelope
The bid-security provision is the section’s most distinctive sentence, and it is about logistics:
“That each bid must be accompanied by a separate envelope containing the contractor’s license and bid security.”
Two documents, one envelope, separate from the bid. The contractor’s license and the bid security are treated as a pair — the letting checks eligibility and security together, before or apart from the price.
For a bidder this is a mechanical requirement that is easy to fail on a deadline. The bid can be perfect and the submission incomplete because the license went in the wrong envelope. It is the kind of provision that decides responsiveness rather than merit.
Ninety days to be unpaid, ninety days to give notice
North Dakota’s claim mechanics track the federal pattern with its own wording.
The first-tier right: a person that has furnished labor or material for a public improvement for which a bond is furnished “and has not been paid in full within ninety days after completion of the contribution of labor or materials may sue on the bond for the amount unpaid at the time of institution of suit.”
Note the measure of recovery — the amount unpaid at the time of institution of suit, which fixes the sum to the filing date rather than to the date of the debt.
The second tier carries the familiar condition:
“However, a person having a direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor, but no contractual relationship with the contractor furnishing the bond, does not have a claim for relief upon the bond unless that person has given written notice to the contractor, within ninety days from the date on which the person completed the contribution, stating with substantial accuracy the amount claimed and the name of the person for which the contribution was performed.”
And, like Maine, North Dakota specifies the channel: “The notice must be served by registered mail in an envelope addressed to the contractor at any place the contractor maintains an office, conducts business, or has a residence.” Registered mail — Maine also allows certified; North Dakota, as quoted here, names registered.
The 90-day figure appears twice doing two different jobs: as the period of non-payment that creates the first-tier right, and as the deadline for the second-tier notice. They are not the same clock and a claimant can satisfy one while missing the other.
The parts of chapter 48-01.2 this page did not read
Section 48-01.2-10 gives the threshold, the timing, the amount, the bid-security packaging and the claim mechanics. It does not, in what we have read, state a limitation period for bringing the action itself — and this page does not supply one from another state’s statute.
The section’s own opening qualifier points to the rest of its chapter, which we have not read here, and the licensing rules the bid envelope refers to are elsewhere again.
If you are pursuing an unpaid North Dakota claim, the deadline question is the one that decides it and it is not answered on this page.
