Virginia market intelligence for June 2026. VDOT's June 24 letting awarded 20 contracts worth $106,179,654 — 2.3x the state's trailing three-letting average — with 72.7% of value in earthwork-intensive work. Iron Index 88 (Strong). Project Pipeline and Broker Opportunity are not scored this cycle — VDOT publishes forward project counts, not dollar values.
One score summarizing project activity, demand, capacity, operating pressure, and near-term opportunity.
VDOT's June letting reached $106.2M — 2.3x its trailing three-letting average.
The two largest contracts carried 57% of June's value; a single award moves the month.
Virginia construction employment fell 2.2% year over year, loosening hauling capacity.
For readers who want the detail behind the score, signals, regional outlook, and operating recommendations.
Executive read: Virginia ran far above its own baseline in June. VDOT's single June letting awarded $106.2 million across 20 contracts, 2.3 times the trailing three-letting average, and nearly three-quarters of that value was earthwork-intensive work. Diesel closed the month well below its recent average, and construction employment eased year over year, which means hauling capacity was looser than normal. One caution: more than half the month's value sits in just two contracts.
39.8% of June's let value in a single $42.2M contract — the largest award of the month. Interchange reconstruction requires approach grading and new foundations, so it is classified as earthwork-intensive.
17.3% of let value in a single contract. Widening and realignment are grading-and-paving work.
9.5% of let value in one on-call contract. Repair and preservation work moves little material, so it is not classified as earthwork-intensive.
5.8% of let value. Lane additions require grading and paving, so this contract is classified as earthwork-intensive.
4.2% of let value. Path and pedestrian work is not earthwork-intensive. The remaining value spreads across bridge, intersection, and roadway contracts, most under $4M each.
On-highway diesel for the Lower Atlantic region (PADD 1C) closed June at $4.55 per gallon, about 12% below its trailing 12-week average — a favorable cost position during the month. EIA publishes diesel by PADD region, so this is a regional figure and not a Virginia pump price.
Virginia construction employment was 226,100 in June, down 2.2% from June 2025. Easing construction employment implies hauling capacity is loosening, since it draws on the same regional labor pool. This is an employment-based proxy, not a measurement of truck supply.
Requires forward-looking letting values for the next 90 days. VDOT's advertisements publish project counts, not dollar values, and a count-based ratio is a different measurement — so the metric is omitted rather than approximated. The Iron Index is computed from the four available metrics.
Derived from Project Pipeline, so it is unavailable for the same reason. It is left blank rather than substituted with a partial calculation.
Extraction and scoring run August 24, 2026, against public data. All figures in this report derive from the three sources below, each retained as a hashed raw artifact for audit.
Each contract's award value is the Rank-1 (low bidder) Total Bid exactly as VDOT computed it on the letting's Vendor Ranking page; item lines are not re-summed. One June contract listed a disqualified, unranked bidder at a lower dollar figure than the ranked winner — VDOT's own ranking governs, so the ranked low bid is used.
Earthwork classification uses VDOT's contract descriptions. Widening, interchange reconstruction, lane additions, roundabouts, and bridge replacement are classified as earthwork-intensive; repair, preventative maintenance, bridge painting, deck work, lighting, and shared-use paths are not. One judgment call is worth stating plainly: the month's largest contract, a combined bridge-and-interchange improvement representing 39.8% of June let value, is classified as earthwork-intensive on the basis that interchange reconstruction requires approach grading and new foundations; classifying it otherwise would reduce the reported earthwork share from 72.7% to 32.9%.
Virginia's baseline is the trailing three complete letting cycles (March 25, April 22, and May 27, 2026), averaging $46.2M per letting — not a 12-month average. VDOT publishes results per letting rather than as a monthly series, so early Virginia editions may swing more than states measured against a full year of history.
Every metric is anchored to the June 2026 reporting period. Diesel is scored against the last full week of June and the twelve weeks preceding it, not against the most recent week available at the time of the run.
The Iron Index is Iron Sheepdog's proprietary market assessment, built from public DOT, EIA, BLS, and Census data. It considers DOT letting activity, work mix, forward pipeline, fuel cost movement, and hauling capacity. Scores run 0–100 on a scale where 60 represents normal conditions for that state measured against its own history — never against other states. The derivation behind the scores is proprietary and is not published. The underlying facts in this report — letting values, contract counts, diesel prices, employment figures — are fully sourced above and can be checked against the cited sources.
The Hauler Capacity score is an employment-based proxy. No public dataset reports dump truck availability by state, so total state construction employment is used as an indicator of capacity conditions. It is not a measurement of truck supply.
Scores describe observed conditions during the reporting period. They are not forecasts or guarantees of future market conditions. Low-bid values are not final awarded values; contracts may be rescinded or adjusted after letting. This report covers state highway lettings only and does not measure private, municipal, or county construction activity. No Iron Sheepdog platform or customer data was used.
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