Data Methodology
How Zabalist collects, processes, and maintains Texas construction intelligence — from raw government records to unified company profiles.
Primary Data Sources
All Zabalist data originates from official government sources. We do not purchase or ingest data from third-party data brokers.
Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation
Contractor licenses, registrations, and construction project filings. Zabalist ingests 327,000+ project records spanning commercial, residential, and specialty work types.
Development Services Department
Building permits, residential and commercial site plans, and subdivision cases sourced from Austin's open data APIs. Includes applicant contacts, project addresses, declared values, and case status.
Electronic State Business Daily
Government solicitations, bid awards, and contract announcements published by Texas state and local agencies via Texas SmartBuy. Enables tracking of companies winning public-sector construction contracts.
Harris County & Travis County Appraisal Districts
Property appraisal data including ownership records, parcel boundaries, assessed values, and improvement details. Used to link property owners to development and construction activity.
Travis County Appraisal District
Property tax records, ownership history, and parcel-level data for all properties in Travis County. Supplements city permit data to identify developers and owners behind active projects.
Entity Grouping Methodology
How we link permits, bids, and licenses to unified company profiles.
AI Name Matching
Our system reviews thousands of variations of company names across sources and uses machine learning to group them into unified profiles. A company filing a permit as "ABC Construction LLC" and registering a TDLR project as "A.B.C. Construction" will typically be identified as the same entity and merged into a single profile.
Name matching incorporates address signals, phone numbers, license numbers, and registered agent data to improve accuracy beyond text similarity alone.
Confidence Scoring
Every entity match is assigned a confidence score on a 0–1 scale based on the strength of corroborating signals.
Multiple corroborating signals (name + address + phone)
Strong name similarity with partial corroboration
Name similarity only; match may be incorrect
Data Coverage
Geographic scope varies by data source.
Texas Statewide
TDLR contractor licenses and project registrations, and ESBD government bids cover all 254 Texas counties.
Austin + Travis County
City of Austin permits, site plans, and Travis County appraisal data provide deep local coverage for the Austin metro area.
Expanding Coverage
We are actively adding permit and appraisal data for Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and other major Texas metros. Coverage depth increases over time.
Limitations and Gaps
We believe in transparency. Here is what our data does not cover well.
Pre-2018 Historical Data
Historical data may be incomplete for records prior to 2018. Earlier records exist in some sources but have not been fully ingested or normalized.
Private Projects
Private construction projects not subject to permitting or government registration are not tracked. Zabalist data reflects publicly filed activity only.
Entity Matching Accuracy
Entity matching confidence varies. Some profiles may inadvertently combine two separate companies with similar names, particularly for common business names.
Informational Purpose
Data is provided for informational purposes only. Zabalist does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of information sourced from government datasets.
Claim or Correct Your Profile
Is your company listed? Claim your profile to verify information and add contact details.
Claimed profiles receive a verified badge and can update their contact information, trade categories, and business description directly on Zabalist.