Which wage determination revision applies to your bid?

Not necessarily the one on SAM.gov today. The answer is set by federal rule, and it depends on your bid opening date.

The ten-day rule, in plain English

Under FAR 22.404-6, the Department of Labor modifies wage determinations throughout the year. A modification is effective for your project if it is published ten or more calendar days before bid opening. Published nine days before? It generally does not apply to that bid (with narrow agency-discretion exceptions). Published after bid opening? It does not change your contract, but the next revision cycle will hit your next bid.

That means the binding document for your job is often a superseded revision that no longer appears as current anywhere on SAM.gov. If you only ever look at the current determination, two things go wrong: you cannot prove which rates you bid from, and you find out about increases at certified-payroll time instead of at pricing time.

Annual supersession makes it worse

Every year, each determination is superseded by a new decision number entirely (MN20250001 becomes MN20260001). Rate changes concentrate at these rollovers. The old number effectively disappears from casual view, taking your bid-time evidence with it.

What WagePin does about it

WagePin archives every revision of every active determination it covers, permanently. When you pin a project, we apply the ten-day rule to your bid date and record the exact revision that legally applied. Every night we check SAM.gov; if your determination changes in a way that actually moves rates (we ignore cosmetic reformatting), you get an email showing each classification's old rate, new rate, and fringe change, compared against your pinned revision, not just the previous one.

The rate pages are free to browse by state and county. Pinning and alerts are free while WagePin is early.

This page is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. The contracting officer's determination and the FAR govern; verify the official documents for anything contractual.