Nevada Performance BondNRS 339 Public Works

No. These are two different bonds protecting two different parties. Your NSCB license bond under NRS 624.270 is a licensing requirement — it protects consumers and the State Contractors Board if you violate the contractor licensing statute, and its amount is set by your license monetary limit ($1,000 to $500,000). The performance bond a public agency demands under NRS 339.025 protects that specific project owner against your failure to complete that specific contract. A $500,000 license bond does not give you the surety capacity to bid a $500,000 public job — capacity is underwritten separately based on your financials. Being fully licensed in Nevada and being approved for project bonding are unrelated approvals, and contractors routinely discover this only after the bid documents land.

NRS 339.025 requires the contractor to furnish BOTH a performance bond and a payment bond before work begins on any public works contract that exceeds $100,000. Each bond must be for not less than 50 percent of the contract amount, though contracting bodies frequently set both at 100 percent, and federal or Davis-Bacon work is always 100 percent. The bonds are filed with the public body that awarded the contract. The same $100,000 line also triggers Nevada prevailing-wage obligations under NRS Chapter 338, so a project crossing that threshold usually activates both bonding and wage requirements at once.

A claimant who has no direct contract with the prime contractor (a second-tier sub or supplier) must first serve a preliminary notice on the prime within 30 days of first furnishing labor or materials, sent by registered or certified mail (NRS 339.035). To make a claim against the payment bond the claimant gives written notice within 90 days after the last day they furnished labor or materials, and any lawsuit on the bond must be filed within one year of that last furnishing. The minimum claim recognized is $500. First-tier subcontractors with a direct contract are not required to serve the 30-day preliminary notice but still face the 90-day and one-year windows.

State highway construction runs under a separate statute. NRS 408.363 governs bond claims on Nevada Department of Transportation contracts, and its clock is much tighter: a claimant generally has 30 days from the contracting agency’s final acceptance of the project to assert a claim, and the window to bring suit is roughly six months. That is dramatically shorter than the one-year suit window on a typical NRS 339 municipal or county job. Subcontractors and suppliers who treat an NDOT job like any other public works contract can run out of time before they realize a different deadline applied. If your work touches an NDOT contract, calendar the final-acceptance date the day you hear it.

Yes, on State Public Works Division projects in particular. Under the SPWD program, a subcontractor whose portion of the work exceeds $50,000 — or one percent of the total project estimate, whichever is greater — must furnish its own performance and payment bond. That means a prime working a state building project should plan for several of its larger trade subs to carry separate bonds, and those subs need surety capacity of their own. It is a frequent surprise for growing subcontractors who assumed the prime’s bond covered the whole job.

For a small, fast contract bond the underwriting can be light, but for a meaningful public works performance bond the surety reviews the same fundamentals everywhere: your business and personal financial statements (working capital and net worth carry the most weight), your largest completed project, current backlog, your bank and trade references, and your continuity plan. Many sureties want CPA-prepared statements before extending real capacity. Personal credit matters at the margins, but a strong balance sheet and a track record of finishing jobs of similar size are what actually unlock a bonding line. A clean NSCB license history helps the story but does not substitute for the financials.