Project Signals doesn't show you everything happening everywhere — that would be useless. Every signal that comes in is checked against your profile, scored, and ranked. The whole point is that you can read the top few and skip the rest.
The two things that decide ranking
Two factors, combined into one score:
- How close the signal is to where you work. Every location you list on CrewFinder — head office, yards, branch offices — gets a pin. The closer a signal's job site is to one of those pins, the higher it ranks.
- How well the signal matches what you do. Your CrewFinder services — welding, hauling, NDT, civil, vacuum trucks, whatever you list — get matched against what the signal is calling for. Closer match, higher rank.
Distance carries a bit more weight than service match. The reasoning: a perfect-fit job that's 800 km away is usually a worse bet than a so-so-fit job that's 30 km away. If a job is in the wrong part of the country for you, the rest of the fit barely matters.
The "why it matched" chip
Every row in your matches list has a small green tag explaining why it showed up. Five possible labels:
- "On your doorstep" — the job is within 1 km of one of your locations.
- "X km from your service area" — the job is within 50 km of one of your locations.
- "Near your service area" — the job is within roughly 200 km of one of your locations.
- "Matches X of your services" — we couldn't tie the story to a specific job site, but the services it's calling for match what you offer.
- "In AB" (or your province) — backup match when we can't lock in distance or services but at least the province lines up.
When the same story shows up in several places
Big stories — a major acquisition, a CEO change, a multi-billion-dollar capex move — get picked up by half a dozen outlets within an hour. Showing you the same story six times is just noise.
So we group them together. You see one row, with the source we picked as the main one, and a small note underneath: "+ N other sources covered this". Click the source link to read the version we picked. The other coverage isn't lost — it's just tucked under that single row instead of cluttering your list.
How long we keep grouping
For most kinds of signals, we group duplicates that show up on the same day. For acquisitions, big capex announcements, and layoffs, we group anything that shows up within a week — those stories tend to get re-reported for several days as new details come out.
Tenders get matched more strictly
Federal tenders (SAM.gov, CanadaBuys) come in by the hundred every day with industry codes attached. Earlier this year, a tender for "general maintenance" in your state would match your shop just because you also worked in that state — which turned out to be too noisy to be useful.
Now tender matches need real overlap on what the procurement is asking for. Same-state alone won't pass the matcher — there has to be a specific service in common between what the tender wants and what your profile lists. Generic catch-all terms (maintenance, testing, services, support) on their own don't count; we need at least one specific service to match.
If you'd rather see the broader picture, the All tenders sub-tab on the Tenders view shows every open federal tender in your country with no matcher filter — see The Tenders tab.
What doesn't get a match
Some signals are genuinely interesting but don't have enough detail to tie to a specific job site — say a country-wide capex change with no location attached. Those won't show up in your matches list. We still keep them on the system, we just don't push you rows you can't act on.
Signals that aren't really news you can do anything with — general industry commentary, oil-price speculation, accident reports, opinion pieces — get filtered out as soon as they come in. We decide it's not a real signal and the story is dropped before it ever reaches your list.
How long signals stay visible
Two different windows, by signal type:
- Tenders stay on your list until seven days past the close date. A short grace window helps you follow up on near-misses without cluttering the feed. Tenders without a published close date stay until the source itself takes them down.
- Other signals (permits, capex, mobilizations, news) stay for 90 days from when they were first published. Older items roll off automatically.
Tenders you save yourself and signals you've already viewed or dismissed follow the same retention windows — your interaction history doesn't extend the lifetime of an item.
Your profile is what we go on
We only know what's on your CrewFinder profile. Thin profile, thin matches. How to improve your matches covers what to update.
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What is Project Signals?
A heads-up feed of tenders, permits, capex announcements, turnarounds, mobilizations, and other operator activity in your area — free with every claimed CrewFinder listing.
The Tenders tab — My tenders and All tenders
Every open federal tender in your country, with the ones we matched to your profile pulled to the top — plus a Save button on the rest to train the matcher for next time.
How to improve your Project Signals matches
Thin profile, thin matches. Three things you can update — locations, services, sector — to make the feed sharper.
Tender-match email alerts
When a new federal tender matches your shop, we email your team — at most once every six hours.
Managing Your Locations and Service Areas
Add your head office and additional bases, set a service radius, and control where you show up in location-based searches.
Managing Services and Equipment
Pick the right services, mark a primary, describe your capabilities, and list the equipment you own or operate.