Whoever wins DEP's next Gowanus contract gets 731 days from notice to proceed to have a new sewer-overflow facility ready to switch on. For roughly the first six months of that, the contract book says, you can't work on the facility site at all.
That's the job in one breath. It's called Construction of CSO Facilities for Gowanus Canal, Construction Package 3, contract CSO-GC-SFS-OH-CP3, and it comes from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. CSO means combined sewer overflow, the mix of stormwater and sewage that spills into the canal in a hard rain. The site is the OH-007 peninsula in Brooklyn, with 2nd Avenue on the east, the canal on the north and the 6th Street turning basin on the south. The underground tank belongs to an earlier contract, Package 2. This package puts the building on top of it.
“The schedule on this job isn't won in year three. It's lost in the first six months, standing outside the fence.”
The summary of work calls for the structure over the existing tank with a green roof, a new 2nd Avenue pump station, the influent and effluent channels and the OH-007 outfall, plus the pump station force main and a grit effluent pipe down 2nd Avenue and along 8th Street to the 3rd Avenue interceptor. Inside go bar screens, grit equipment, pumps, conveyors, three bridge cranes, gates, carbon odor control, HVAC, plumbing, fire protection and controls. Con Edison supplies three transformers and three network protectors, and you install them. The drawing set runs 723 sheets.
Now the schedule. Schedule A gives you 1,333 consecutive calendar days to substantial completion, a little over three and a half years, and sets liquidated damages at $32,800 for every day past it. The 731-day activation milestone sits inside that, and the specs say there's no limit on damages for missing a milestone. Behind it is a federal date. Under the City's Superfund order with EPA, the work needed to activate the facility has to be done by February 1, 2029. If EPA fines the City because you ran late, the contract says you pay the City back, in an amount the commissioner decides.
Here's the thing about those 731 days. The staging section says that for approximately six months after notice to proceed, the Package 3 contractor has no access to the access driveway, work on the facility site can't start, and nobody works inside the tank. Off-site work can go. Even after the tank contractor reaches substantial completion, the tank stays off limits until its watertightness testing and leak repairs are accepted. The bid sheet carries a $200,000 allowance for unknown as-built conditions left behind by Package 2.
This is a Superfund site, and the dirt is priced like one. The unit prices carry 23,100 tons of nonhazardous soil disposal, 2,400 tons of hazardous disposal and 4,700 tons going to a landfill as daily cover. The excavation spec says on-site reuse isn't allowed unless EPA expressly authorizes it. Sheet piling goes in by press-in only, no impact and no vibration. Water from the excavation runs through a construction water treatment system that's its own lump sum.
You also become the operator. The contractor takes over the existing 2nd Avenue pumping station and keeps it running, with a licensed operator and a standby generator, until the new station is in service. There's no separate pay item for running it. That cost goes in your lump sum, and the bid sheet carries a $100,000 allowance for repairs when equipment there fails. Then comes the new facility. The bid sheet carries 34 weeks of final and operational testing, paid by the week, and the testing has to catch three qualifying storms. A dry spell doesn't let you off. It also carries 52 weeks of contractor operation after testing, paid by the week if DEP has you keep running the plant until it takes over.
Bids go in through PASSPort only. Paper gets thrown out. Per the City Record notice they're due before 10 a.m. on November 17, and DEP reads them out on Microsoft Teams at 2 p.m. that day. Bid security is 5% of the bid. Performance and payment bonds are 100%. The bid booklet and the contract's Schedule A print no cost estimate. Subcontracting is capped at 49% of the contract price, so the prime self-performs more than half or brings a partner. Minimum qualifications are at least three projects substantially completed in the last ten years, with at least three years of experience doing similar work in scope and size. In a joint venture, one member has to meet that test and hold at least 50%.
A stack of paper rides with the bid. You name your plumbing, HVAC and electrical subs and the price you agreed with each. You fill in a 42-line manufacturers list, and DEP has already written Trane, Pelco and Xylem/Flygt on five of those lines as sole source. And you sign three federal certifications, because the booklet binds in the state revolving fund terms: Build America Buy America, American Iron and Steel, and lobbying.
Those same terms set the participation number. It's a 20% DBE fair share objective, a good-faith-efforts target counted on firms in the SBA directory or certified through New York's unified certification program. A DBE that passes half or more of its work to a non-DBE is presumed a broker. A DBE hauler has to own and run at least one truck on the job, and with that much soil leaving the site, the trucking rule matters. The booklet carries no separate City M/WBE goal sheet, so check PASSPort for anything posted there. Davis-Bacon weekly payrolls sit on top of City prevailing wage. The job runs under the 2025 citywide project labor agreement, every tier signs a letter of assent, and the community hiring target is at least 30% of labor hours.
So what do you do now? The virtual pre-bid is October 7 at 10 a.m. on Teams. The site walk is the same day at 2 p.m. at 2 Second Avenue in Brooklyn. Bring a hard hat, vest, boots and safety glasses. There's no parking on Second Avenue from 6th Street to the dead end, and nobody answers questions on the walk. Questions go through the Discussion with Buyer forum in PASSPort. The specs say the walk is your only access to the site before bid day.
If you're a sub or a supplier, start calling primes now. Three trades get their prices locked in on bid day, and the equipment names go on a signed form the same morning. A DBE trucker with real trucks has something to sell here.
And read the staging section, 01 73 12, before you read anything else. The schedule on this job isn't won in year three. It's lost in the first six months, standing outside the fence.