Bids opened October 28, 2025 on MTA Construction & Development contract C40299, and nine firms showed up. Welkin Mechanical LLC is the apparent low at $74,236,719 for a three-borough package: new HVAC, boilers and fire alarms, building management systems, and rehabilitated depots and parking lots at one bus depot each in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

The top of the tab was tight. Infinity Contracting Services Corp came in second at $76,986,362 — 3.7 percent over the low. Navillus Contracting bid $82,003,874, Stirling Mechanical $82,772,094, and FOS Development Corp $86,621,000. Then the field broke in half. The last four bids — Iannelli Construction at $103,998,724, Richards Plumbing & Heating at $110,608,724, CDE Air Conditioning at $110,843,214 and Judlau Contracting at $120,968,724 — all cleared $100 million. Five firms priced one job and four priced a much bigger one. A gap like that says the bidders did not all see the same work in the documents.

What the low bidder signed up for, per the MTA's own solicitation notice: replace the heating and cooling plants — HVAC and boilers — hang air curtains at the doors, replace the fire alarms, and install building management systems, the computerized controls that run a building's mechanical equipment from one screen. Add rehab of the depot buildings and their parking lots. The three sites are the Kingsbridge Depot at 4065 10th Ave. in upper Manhattan, the Flatbush Depot at 4901 Fillmore Ave. in Brooklyn, and the Charleston Depot at 4700 Arthur Kill Rd. on Staten Island. The MTA advertised it as an A+B contract — price and schedule bid together — with an 845-day term, 100 percent federal FTA funding and a 22.5 percent DBE goal.

A depot is where the buses live. They fuel, charge, get fixed and roll out of these buildings every morning, and when a depot's systems go down, routes run short. Kingsbridge dispatches the Bx3, Bx7, Bx10, Bx13, Bx18, Bx20 and M100 — daily rides for upper Manhattan and the west Bronx. Charleston covers the S55, S56, S74, S78 and S84 on Staten Island's South Shore. Both are on the state's list of depots being fitted with charging gear for the MTA's zero-emission bus rollout, which makes the buildings' electrical and mechanical backbone matter more, not less. Flatbush covers its corner of southeast Brooklyn from Fillmore Avenue. Working boilers, working alarms and one control system watching it all are what keep those buildings — and the buses inside them — moving.

One number worth sitting with: the MTA advertised this job in July 2025 at an estimated $10 million to $50 million. The apparent low came in at $74,236,719 — above the top of that advertised range — and every other bid was higher still. The opening moved, too: the notice originally set an August 21, 2025 due date, and bids opened October 28.

Apparent low is not an award. The bids are under review, and the tab stays unofficial until MTA C&D completes that review and makes the award. Until then, Welkin Mechanical holds the low and eight firms wait to see if it sticks.