Buried in a Paperwork Reduction Act notice published 4 September is a number worth the attention of any state DOT with a digital delivery ambition and a grants writer: FHWA expects about 35 applicants for up to $34 million.
That is roughly a million dollars per applicant if the field comes in as estimated, in a federal-aid program where competitive rounds routinely draw several hundred submissions.
What ADCMS funds
The Advanced Digital Construction Management Systems program was created by Section 5513 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and codified at 23 U.S.C. 503(c)(5). Eligible entities are state departments of transportation, applying alone or in partnership with local agencies, Tribes or private industry, and they may also partner with institutions of higher education. The notice of funding opportunity runs through grants.gov.
FHWA’s stated goals for the program are interoperability with other systems, productivity gains, complexity management, fewer project delays and cost overruns, and improved worker safety and environmental outcomes. In practice that covers e-ticketing, model-based construction, digital as-builts and the inspection and materials-acceptance workflows that sit around them.
The comment period is narrower than it looks
Be precise about what is open. This is the 30-day PRA notice forwarding the information collection request to OMB, under Docket No. FHWA-2026-0091, with comments due 5 October 2026. What is open for comment is the information collection, meaning the application burden and the data FHWA proposes to gather. It is not a comment period on the program design or the grant selection criteria.
The prior 60-day notice ran on 16 January 2026 at 91 FR 2268 and received no comments. Nobody objected to the paperwork, which is either a sign that the burden estimate is reasonable or a sign that nobody read it.
Agency contact is Melissa Maiefski in the Office of Competitive Grants and Workforce Programs.
How much to read into the numbers
Both figures come with conditions. The roughly 35 applicants is an agency estimate produced to calculate paperwork burden, not a count of anything received. “Up to $34 million” is a ceiling, and the notice says plainly that NOFOs are subject to the availability of funds.
Still, this is the one federal line aimed squarely at digital delivery rather than at concrete, and it is the mechanism through which a contractor’s e-ticketing and model-based workflows get written into a state DOT’s standard specifications. Jobs on the scale of the Blatnik Bridge replacement and the Howard Street Tunnel clearance program are where those specifications eventually bite. A prepared DOT and contractor partnership facing a 35-applicant field has better odds here than in almost any other IIJA discretionary program.