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Data Platform · Construction IntelligenceZabalist logo

Zabalist

“Know what’s being built. See who’s behind it.”

A connected view of what Texas is building

Our contribution
Data platform, record matching, search & maps
Status
Live in production
Reviewed
September 2026
254Texas counties covered
MapsSearch by project and place
AlertsSaved-search updates
APIConstruction data access
  • 254 Texas counties
  • Company names resolved across their variants
  • Saved-search alerts and a public bid board
zabalist.comExplore live
Zabalist’s Texas construction homepage with links to its company directory and project records.
Public Zabalist site · captured September 4, 2026.
01 / The brief

Find the firms behind the filings.

Back to the portfolio

Zabalist connects the scattered records behind Texas construction. State project registrations, municipal permits, site plans, contractor information, and public bids become a searchable system that lets people move from an area, to a project, to the firms doing the work. Entity resolution and a shared data model make that journey possible across sources that were never designed to fit together.

A contractor searching for relevant work has to cross several public systems. A project’s registration, permit, owner, and design team can appear in different portals with different names and identifiers.

Company names change between filings. Reliable search requires a way to connect those variants without merging unrelated businesses.

The result also has to stay useful after the first search. People need to follow changes, revisit saved criteria, and inspect where each record came from.

02 / The approach

How the pieces
came together.

From the underlying data to the moment someone uses the product, each decision serves the work.

  1. 01

    Normalize records as they arrive

    Scheduled ingestion brings construction and business records into a common Postgres data layer. Source-specific processing preserves the information needed to connect a filing to its project, location, and participants.

  2. 02

    Resolve the names behind the work

    Name normalization, fuzzy matching, and model-assisted disambiguation help connect variants to a company. Mappings preserve the relationship between the original filing and the consolidated firm.

  3. 03

    Make a large corpus navigable

    Project and company pages share the same underlying relationships. Database-backed filtering and viewport queries let the map request a bounded region, while cached rollups support directory and sector views.

  4. 04

    Turn a search into a useful watchlist

    Saved searches preserve filters across projects, permits, site plans, and companies. Change tracking supports alerts about new records and relevant updates, giving a subscriber a reason to return.

03 / Inside the product

Search the record. See the relationships.

Detail / 01

From a project to its participants

A construction record becomes an entry point into a firm’s work history, associated projects, and other public information. The value comes from the connections between records.

Detail / 02

Practical tools around the directory

Public license lookup, a permit-cost estimator, contractor badges, sector pages, and a bid board make the underlying data useful for different kinds of construction research.

Detail / 03

Public sources remain visible

Data-source disclosures and record context let readers understand what a result represents. Statewide coverage does not imply that every source has the same completeness or update cadence.

What this makes possible

  • Live at zabalist.com with statewide construction search, company intelligence, and a public bid board.
  • Project maps and saved-search alerts support ongoing research.
  • License lookup, contractor badges, and a construction-data API extend the platform beyond the directory.
04 / See it working

The system, live.

Interactive views built from how Zabalist actually works, including the public data it runs on. Pick one to explore.

A three-step model of Zabalist: choose a step to see what happens and why.

AN INVITATION TO EXPLORE

How Zabalist works

05 / Under the hood

The right tools.
Thoughtfully connected.

A closer look at the technology and integrations behind Zabalist.

SYSTEM ANATOMY 06 LAYERS
060504030201

A conceptual view of the technology groups. Layer positions do not represent deployment boundaries.

EXPLORE THE BUILD / Zabalist

SELECTED LAYER

Application

  • Next.js
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Tailwind CSS
CONNECTED TO

TDLR · Austin Socrata · Austin Build + Connect · Texas ESBD · Stripe · Resend · Cloudflare

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