What changed
FACT (USAspending): IIJA appropriated $11.293B into the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund; OSMRE is distributing ~$10.873B to eligible states/tribes at ~$725M/year over 15 years. Kentucky's Energy & Environment Cabinet just received $74.2M; Pennsylvania DEP received $244.8M in the same program. States convert these grants into hundreds of state-let reclamation construction contracts.
Why now
The money is already appropriated and flowing on an equal annual basis for 15 years (FACT from award text) — this is not a speculative trend but a statutorily scheduled pipeline. Every project let under it is federally funded, which triggers Davis-Bacon certified-payroll obligations for every contractor and subcontractor, every week, for the life of each project. The filer class is being created award-by-award right now, and most of these contractors are small rural earthwork firms with no back-office software.
Converging signals
Three signals meet: (1) a funded mandate — $10.873B/15yr AML program with multiple state awards visible in USAspending (KY $74.2M, PA $244.8M, WV $26.6M); (2) a defined compelled-actor class — reclamation contractors who must submit bids, weekly WH-347 certified payrolls, and closeout documentation to state AML offices (INFERENCE from 'costs for activities identified in the approved reclamation plan' plus standard Davis-Bacon applicability to federally funded construction); (3) replicated near-identical demand across ~28 AML states/tribes, each with its own procurement portal and reporting formats. The adjacent Orphaned Well formula grants (multiple $25M+ awards in evidence) are the same shape and an obvious expansion.
Customer pain
HYPOTHESIS grounded in program structure: a 15-person excavation contractor bidding AML work must (a) discover lettings scattered across 28 state procurement sites, (b) produce compliant weekly certified payrolls with correct Davis-Bacon wage determinations or face withheld payments and debarment risk, and (c) assemble per-project cost accounting and closeout packages in the state's format. Missed bids are lost revenue; payroll errors freeze cash flow on their largest contracts. No direct complaint threads were provided — the pain is inferred from the compliance structure, which per the forced-buyer rule is sufficient here for the payroll/doc obligation, but the BID-ALERT half is discretionary and its willingness-to-pay is unproven.
Who pays
The reclamation contractor (and subs), not the government. They pay because certified payroll is a condition of getting paid on the contract — the buyer cannot opt out. Secondary payers: the engineering/consulting firms that manage AML projects for states. No government procurement office needs to approve anything.
Solved today
Generic certified-payroll SaaS (LCPtracker, eBacon, Points North) — several states mandate LCPtracker specifically for the AGENCY side; contractors also use payroll services or hand-fill WH-347 PDFs. Bid discovery today = manually watching each state AML/procurement site or paying ConstructConnect/BidNet, which are horizontal and noisy. Closeout documentation is done ad hoc in Word/Excel per state template.
Why current solutions are bad
Incumbents are horizontal: none aggregates AML lettings as a category, none pre-maps the 28 state AML reporting formats, and LCPtracker is priced/designed for agencies and large GCs, not a 6-truck reclamation outfit. The small-contractor segment gets the compliance burden without the tooling. The wedge is vertical packaging: AML-only bid feed + payroll + closeout in one cheap tool sized to the actual filer.
Proposed product
Micro-SaaS: (1) daily AML bid-letting alerts scraped/aggregated from all ~28 state AML procurement sources, filterable by state and project size; (2) WH-347 certified-payroll generator that pulls the correct Davis-Bacon wage determination (SAM.gov WDOL data is public) and outputs signed, submission-ready payrolls per state format; (3) project-documentation binder builder (cost accounting, daily logs, closeout) matched to state AML templates. Charge $99–199/mo per contractor + optional per-payroll fee.
MVP version
4–6 weeks: scrapers for the 6–8 heaviest AML states (KY, PA, WV, VA, OH, IL, IN, AL — HYPOTHESIS on ranking, verifiable from e-AMLIS distributions), an email alert digest, and a WH-347 generator with wage-determination lookup. Defer closeout binders. The founder has already shipped exactly this pattern (portal automation, per-filing monetization) for FMCSA ELDT.
30-day build
Build scrapers + alert digest; pull KY/PA/WV plan-holder and pre-qualified contractor lists (public records — founder strength) to assemble the outreach universe; interview 5–10 AML contractors from recent bid tabulations to validate the payroll-pain hypothesis and confirm which states mandate LCPtracker (kill-check).
60-day build
Ship WH-347 generator; run free-alert beta to 100+ contractors from bid-tab lists; convert with a founding-customer price ($79/mo). Add per-payroll pricing for subs.
90-day revenue plan
Target 20–40 paying contractors ($99–149/mo avg) = $2–6k MRR, plus per-filing fees. Sales motion is demonstrated value: send a contractor the AML letting they missed last month.
Distribution path
Direct and list-based, not relationship sales: bid tabulations and plan-holder lists are public records naming every active AML contractor with contact info; state AML pre-qualification lists; Facebook groups and county-level networks for excavation contractors in Appalachia; content SEO on 'AML bid results [state]'. The fire-service/industrial credibility plays well with this buyer.
Pricing hypothesis
$99–199/mo per contractor subscription (alerts + docs) + $5–10 per certified payroll for subs/occasional users. Contractors on a $2M reclamation contract do not blink at $150/mo that protects their pay applications.
Technical difficulty
Low-moderate for the founder: scraping 28 heterogeneous state sites is grunt work he has done before; WH-347 is a fixed federal form; wage-determination data is public via SAM.gov. Ongoing scraper maintenance is the main tax. No government API approval needed — the tool prepares filings, contractors submit them.
Legal / regulatory risk
Low. Preparing payroll forms is not licensed activity; the founder never touches the government portal credentialing himself. Accuracy matters (a wrong wage rate harms the customer) — mitigate with the official wage-determination feed and a review step. Not heavy_compliance: compliance is the product, not a barrier on the founder.
Platform dependency
State websites can restructure (scraper churn) but cannot 'deplatform' a tool that reads public procurement notices and generates federal forms. No platform owner exists.
Founder fit
Near-maximal (9): exact repeat of his proven ELDT pattern — read a mandate, find the compelled filer, build the submission/automation layer, charge per filing — aimed at an industrial/dirt-and-iron buyer he culturally matches (recycling/scrap/operations background). Consistent with the stored heuristic (confidence 0.79) that government-portal mandate opportunities fit him best.
Breakout potential
The same engine (state bid alerts + Davis-Bacon payroll + closeout docs) replicates to Orphaned Well plugging contracts (multiple $25M+ state awards in the evidence set), SRF water projects, and any IIJA-funded state-let construction vertical — a 'compliance toolkit per funded vertical' franchise.
Final recommendation
PURSUE with a 30-day validation gate. The money is statutorily scheduled for 15 years (hard fact), the filer class is compelled weekly (Davis-Bacon), the founder has already executed this exact playbook once, and no incumbent packages the AML vertical. The two honest kill-risks — state-mandated payroll portals and analog-buyer WTP — are both cheaply testable in 30 days from public bid tabulations before committing the full build. Do not skip that gate.
Next action
Pull the last 12 months of AML bid tabulations from KY, PA, and WV (public records), build the contractor contact list, and call 10 winners: ask what system (if any) the state makes them use for certified payroll and what they'd pay for AML bid alerts. Simultaneously stand up the 3-state scraper as the demo.