Lowest observed price is not a contract status.
The cheapest line-item price can belong to a bidder whose total proposal is not the lowest. Even a documented overall rank of one does not, by itself, establish award. Review the agency’s bid and award records for that contract.
Apparent low precedes the final award decision.
An apparent low bidder is identified at a stage of the procurement process. Responsiveness, responsibility and other agency requirements can affect award. Keep the agency’s explicit status and its date with the observation.
The first-release default includes eligible bidders.
BidFigures balances contracts: first a median within each contract, then a median across those contract values. A contract with ten bidders gets the same final weight as a contract with two. This is a descriptive policy for comparing bids, not a model of an award decision.
Unavailable modes stay unavailable.
The present source snapshot does not establish awarded-bidder status. No bid is relabeled as awarded from its rank. A future apparent-low or awarded subset must have explicit source evidence; it must not silently mix with the all-bidder mode when data is sparse.
Inspect an unusual bid in context.
A very low price on one item can coexist with higher prices elsewhere in a proposal. The Federal Highway Administration discusses bid analysis and unbalanced bids as contract-level questions. A descriptive outlier flag is a prompt to inspect the record, not proof of error or improper conduct.
Primary reference: FHWA: bid analysis and unbalanced bids ↗