Michigan Construction Intel

Open Data Portal for the city of Detroit, Michigan, USA.

https://youtu.be/IXcWp7bsdJA Transform Your Contracting Journey in Michigan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Licensing Success! Get your General Contractor.

While customers and building inhabitants typically only see the finished product, you know the amount of expertise and hard work that goes into creating.

Michigan takes contractor licensing seriously: Make sure you know all the licensing and registration requirements you need to do business.

Federal Davis-Bacon applies to projects with federal funding above a threshold; state "little Davis-Bacon" laws apply to state-funded projects with their own thresholds. The trap: rules apply to the work, not the contract — a privately funded portion of a project with any covered funding is subject to coverage on the whole.

"Pay-when-paid" sets a timing condition only — the GC must still pay even if the owner never does. "Pay-if-paid" creates a true condition precedent — no owner payment, no GC payment to subs. Many states will not enforce pay-if-paid clauses without unmistakably clear language; ambiguity defaults to pay-when-paid.

In most MI jurisdictions, the lien filing deadline runs from last day on the project OR last delivery of materials, whichever is later — but several states use a project-wide cutoff (substantial completion) regardless of when your specific work ended. Counting the wrong start date is the leading cause of waived liens.