The Maritime Administration wants Patten Hall renovated in 365 days, and it wants the number by Sunday night. What it has not yet said is how big the backup generator needs to be.

Solicitation 6923G226Q000034 covers a full interior renovation of Patten Hall at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, 300 Steamboat Road in Kings Point, Nassau County -- the building that houses the academy's medical clinic. Twenty-six sections of work: dental and medical exam rooms, a sterilization room stripped out and refitted with new casework, a lab, an X-ray room, six bathrooms on the first floor and six more upstairs, guest rooms, offices, the EMS squad room and ambulance bay, three stairwells, roughly 9,500 square feet of new textile composite flooring, about 3,900 linear feet of cove base, a rebuilt ADA ramp, and lead and asbestos abatement in a building people are still working in.

It is a firm-fixed-price contract, a total small business set-aside, NAICS 236220. Quotes close September 14 at 11:59 p.m. Performance and payment bonds are required within 10 calendar days of award. No bid guarantee. Liquidated damages run $1,000 for every calendar day the job is late.

## The nine pending answers

Amendment 0001 went out September 4 with a question-and-answer sheet. Ten questions got answers. Nine got the words PENDING RESPONSE and a promise of Amendment 0002.

Read that list and you are reading the things that actually price this job:

- The generator's kW/kVA rating, and whether a natural gas line even exists at the concrete pad location. Section 26 requires a natural-gas fired backup generator with an automatic transfer switch to carry the pharmacy, the server room, the ambulance bay rollup door, second-floor lights and computers, and the elevator. It does not say how many kilowatts. - Whether the government will set a bid allowance for the concealed plumbing leaks in Sections 18 and 20. The scope says locate the source of leaks above the ceilings on the second and third floors and repair them. Nobody knows how much pipe is bad. - Whether the academy clears medical equipment, furniture and records out of the abatement areas before mobilization, or whether the contractor carries secure moving and storage inside the fixed price. - Whether Patten Hall stays occupied during the 0700 to 1630 work window, and what phasing applies to noisy work and utility shutdowns. - The abatement report. The floor plans. The manufacturer and model for the flooring and the metal cabinets.

Questions close September 8 at 11:59 p.m. Amendment 0001 did not extend the offer date.

## Roof work is out

The one thing Amendment 0001 settled cleanly: roofing is gone. A bidder pointed out that Section L told them to email under the subject line "Roof Replacement of DPW Buildings" while the statement of work described interior renovation, abatement and MEP. The answer was blunt -- any reference to roof repairs is in error, and roof repairs are removed from the requirement, whether they reference Patten Hall or the DPW buildings.

That matters for your past-performance package. Section L still asks each of your three contract examples to describe the roof type. That instruction is now dead text. The government's answer says the relevant experience is work similar in size, scope and magnitude to Section C -- interiors, abatement, MEP.

## The wage determination is named, not attached

Another bidder asked for the Davis-Bacon decision so labor burdens could be calculated. The answer names it -- General Wage Decision NY20260012, Nassau and Suffolk -- and then tells the bidder to go to SAM.gov, open the wage determination search, enter the number and download it. It is not in the package. Pull it yourself.

## No more site visits

Two government-hosted walkthroughs ran September 1 and September 3. A firm that asked to schedule one got the answer flat: there will be no more site visits.

That sits awkwardly against the abatement sections, which say the contractor must attend a pre-bid walkthrough before bidding to become familiar with onsite conditions, and that the walkthrough is where the Department of Public Works, the contracting officer's representative and Public Safety mark the actual removal areas. The square footages in the statement of work are called approximations the contractor is to verify at that walkthrough. If you did not make September 1 or 3, you are pricing roughly 3,081 square feet of lead-abatement area off a written list, sight unseen.

## What the historic listing costs you

The academy is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Patten medical clinic sits inside the historic district. All work has to be consistent with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, 36 CFR part 68, and the Standards for Rehabilitation at 36 CFR 67.7. That is not a checkbox. It shapes what you can strip, what you have to save, and how the repairs get made.

On top of that, the lead work is health-care adjacent, so the academy is requiring a negative pressure enclosure to protect building occupants, HEPA filtration at 0.3 microns and 99.97 percent efficiency, and containment until the academy's own industrial hygienist signs a final clearance. Clearance levels are 10 micrograms per square foot on floors and 100 on window sills and troughs. If the paint will not come off leaving a clean, paintable surface, the plaster comes out in its entirety.

The asbestos work -- about 24 inches of ceiling plaster in a second-floor hallway and 18 to 24 inches of wall plaster behind a radiator in room 7216 -- has to be scheduled when the academy is empty. After hours and weekends. Price the shift differential.

## The award is not going to low bid

This one catches people. The evaluation method is Highest Technically Rated with a Fair and Reasonable Price under FAR 15.103-3, and the solicitation states plainly that the government will not consider tradeoffs between price and non-price factors. The highest technically rated proposal wins if its price is fair and reasonable. Only if it is not does the government move down to the next one.

So the technical submission is the whole game. Three previous contracts from the last seven years, similar in type, magnitude, complexity and scope, with contract numbers, prices and references. A technical approach. A price breakout showing labor, material and other costs at minimum. Proof you are qualified and credentialed to work in Nassau County. Proof of insurance and bonding. Your SAM unique entity ID.

The government also reserves the right to award on the initial quotation, as received, without clarifications or negotiations. There is no second pass to fix a thin package.

## What to do next

If you are bidding: watch SAM.gov for Amendment 0002 and do not lock a generator number, a plumbing allowance or a furniture-handling assumption until it lands. Get your questions in before tonight's cutoff. Download NY20260012 yourself. Build your three past-performance examples around interior, abatement and MEP work, not roofing.

If you are a sub: this job needs a New York- or EPA-licensed lead abatement contractor and a New York State Department of Labor licensed asbestos contractor with a 40-hour supervisor, plus an electrician who can set a gas generator and transfer switch on a new pad and tie it to a pharmacy, a server room and an elevator. Those three trades are the schedule. Find the primes now.

And if you are a small business that has never chased federal work: a total set-aside on a 365-day building renovation in Nassau County, with no bid guarantee required, is about as approachable as this market gets. The bonding still has to be real, and it has to be in place 10 days after award.