If you priced the Ingersoll Hall HVAC job at Brooklyn College before September 28, you priced a different job. That's the day CUNY's construction arm put out a second addendum that takes three months off the schedule, adds work in a second building and issues 146 new or revised drawing sheets. Bids are now due October 16 at 11:59 PM.
Start with the date, because two addenda came out three days apart and they do different things. Addendum No. 1, dated September 25, has one line in it. It moves the due date from October 5 to October 16, same 11:59 PM cutoff. Addendum No. 2, dated September 28, never mentions the date. It swaps out pages of the spec book and the drawings.
“If you priced this job before September 28, you priced a different job.”
Here's the job. The City University Construction Fund, the state corporation that builds for CUNY, wants one general contractor on a lump-sum bid, Project No. BC-CUCF-19-26, to put a new outdoor-air ventilation system through Ingersoll Hall on the college's Bedford Avenue campus in Brooklyn. That means three energy recovery ventilators, one for each wing, plus heat pump systems, ductwork, electrical, plumbing, fire alarm, audiovisual, and asbestos and lead abatement, with new ceilings and finishes in about 38 rooms and the corridors. The spec book names Haakon as the basis of design for the custom air units and Daikin for the heat pumps. The work runs in three phases, west wing, then east, then center. Each phase has to be commissioned and accepted by the owner before you start the next.
Now the schedule. The spec book gave you 34 months from notice to proceed to substantial completion. Addendum 2 rewrites that paragraph to 31. Nobody rewrote the bid request, which still says 34 months. And the phasing plan's preliminary schedule still adds up to 1035 calendar days, January 2027 to October 2029, which is the old 34. The same addendum makes the work in that phasing plan part of the contract. So you've got 31 months on one page and a 34-month plan on another, and you'd be signing both. You can't ask about it either. CUNY's written answers hold the question deadline at September 9.
Then there's the work that's new, or firmer than it was in August. The list of swing space, the rooms the college moves into while you build, got replaced. The new one adds James Hall, a building the bid request never mentions, with 28 rooms on the list. Each one gets cleared out, cleaned, painted and wired for power, data and voice. The Ingersoll swing rooms, which the August plan covered in walkthrough notes, are now a table headed "Required repairs (by Contractor)" with plaster ceilings, flooring and mold on ductwork in it. You also owe four three-ton spot coolers to keep lecture halls 1310 and 2310 cool, from mobilization through all three phases. The two Public Safety trailers lost the word "Option" on their title sheet and go in right after mobilization. And there's about 150 linear feet of concrete path to pour in the west courtyard.
The drawings took some work out, too. On a dozen mechanical plans, the fire-smoke dampers on hallway walls became plain fire dampers. The electrical and fire alarm sheets drop those dampers, and the addendum counts them sheet by sheet: 85 on one pair of sheets, 113 on the next, 107 on four more. Don't add those up. The same floor shows on more than one sheet, and the fire alarm sheets repeat the electrical counts. If your subs priced those dampers, that number should come down. Also changed: the duct risers to be removed on 13 demolition sheets, a new sub-cellar demolition sheet, and new riser diagrams for exhaust, drainage and water.
CUNY's written answers to bidders, also dated September 28, settle a few more things. No bid bond. No allowances. Existing ductwork gets cleaned, sealed and insulated across the whole job, not just where you can reach it. You move the lab equipment, with specialty movers. And the building's controls and fire alarm vendors are named: AME Inc. and Johnson Controls.
On labor, prevailing wage applies and so does the Construction Fund's project labor agreement with the New York City Building and Construction Trades Council. The goals are 30% for minority- and women-owned firms and 6% for service-disabled veteran-owned firms, and only New York State-certified firms count. There's no required split between minority-owned and women-owned firms as long as the total gets to 30%. Payment and performance bonds are each for the full contract amount. CUNY printed no cost estimate in the bid request, the addenda or its answers. The nearest thing to a size marker is its answer that the labor agreement applies to projects over $3 million.
Price the clock, too. All abatement, demolition, coring and utility shutdowns happen outside campus hours, which the spec sets at 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays. The spec says after-hours work comes with no extra pay. The abatement table lists 1,350 square feet and 6,800 linear feet of asbestos material. Deliveries get one hour a day, 7 to 8 in the morning, Monday to Friday.
Here's the catch on who can bid. The September 8 site visit was mandatory, and the bid request says a firm that didn't attend and sign in can't submit a bid. Neither addendum reopens it. CUNY also declined to hand out the sign-in sheet. So if you're a sub, you can't look up who walked it. The primes have to come to you, and they need to, because the bid form makes each one list its subs by name, trade and dollar amount, signed and notarized.
If you walked it, reprice from the replacement pages and lock your sub numbers. The package goes in by email in three parts: the signed respondent form, a qualifications file showing at least five years of this kind of work and at least five similar jobs finished in the last five years, and the notarized bid form. The award goes to the low bidder who meets the qualifications. If you're an HVAC, electrical, abatement or fire alarm sub, call the GCs you know chase CUNY work this week. Eleven extra days sounds like a gift. Read what came with it.