The Department of Veterans Affairs is buying about 7,000 square feet of ceiling work at the Brooklyn VA Medical Center, 800 Poly Place — tile out, clean and disinfect what is above it, tile back in. Quotes are due September 15 at 4 p.m. Eastern. It is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business set-aside, NAICS 236220, and the performance period is 30 calendar days.
Before anything else: the VA attached the wrong wage determination to the original solicitation and fixed it on August 28. Amendment 1 supersedes and replaces that schedule with General Decision NY20260003, Building Construction, Kings County, New York, and instructs offerors to disregard the earlier one and price to the corrected schedule. If your labor number came off the first posting, it is wrong.
“Wet insulation, rodent nesting and animal feces above the ceiling — and concealed conditions are excluded from the scope.”
The same amendment does two other things. It extended the quote deadline to September 15, and it requires offerors to acknowledge receipt of the amendment in their submission — failure to acknowledge, the VA writes, may result in the quote being deemed non-responsive. That is a job lost on a checkbox, and it happens.
Now the part that decides whether this is worth bidding. The statement of work is honest about what is above those tiles: wet insulation, rodent-contaminated materials, animal feces, nesting materials and accumulated debris, all of which come out. The contractor HEPA-vacuums every accessible surface above the ceiling, applies approved disinfectants and wipes down contaminated surfaces, then runs an electrostatic disinfection treatment through the accessible work areas. Dumpsters, containment and disposal are the contractor's.
Then read the exclusion list. Asbestos, lead, mold and hazardous material abatement are out. Structural repairs are out. Electrical, HVAC, plumbing, sprinkler, fire alarm and fire suppression work are out. Pest control and extermination are out. Major grid components, suspension wires, main runners and cross tees are out. And this one: repairs resulting from concealed or unforeseen conditions discovered during demolition are out.
Put those two lists side by side. A ceiling cavity with standing moisture and rodent nesting is a ceiling cavity that produces mold, rusted runners and surprises. Every one of those is a contract modification, not a bid item — and the statement of work says nobody but the Contracting Officer can authorize additional work, naming the COR and other VA personnel specifically as people who cannot. So price the tile, the cleaning and the disinfection, and get your modification paperwork moving the day you find something, because there is no allowance sitting in this scope to absorb it.
The tile work itself is straightforward and thinly specified. Roughly 7,000 square feet of suspended acoustical tile out and disposed, damaged grid components pulled as required, minor hold-down clips replaced as necessary, then roughly 7,000 square feet of new lay-in acoustical tile in, cut and fit around lighting fixtures, HVAC diffusers, sprinkler heads, access panels and other penetrations. The packet names no tile type, no NRC, no dimension and no manufacturer, and there are no drawings — you are pricing off the walk-through.
On the set-aside math: the VA's limitations-on-subcontracting clause is checked for general construction, which caps what can go to non-certified firms at 85 percent of what the government pays. Work that a similarly situated certified SDVOSB or VOSB further subcontracts counts against that same 85 percent. Cost of materials is excluded from the calculation. The signed certification has to come in with the quote — the VA states it will not consider offers from offerors that do not provide it, and those responses are ineligible for evaluation and award. Bad-faith certification carries referral to the VA Suspension and Debarment Committee, a Small Business Act fine, and prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 1001.
Two more items that catch first-time federal healthcare bidders. Nothing in this package touches the VA network or stores patient information, but every contractor on site must still complete VA privacy training for personnel without computer-system access. And the records-management clause flows down into every subcontract with written subcontractor acknowledgement — a subcontractor's violation is attributed to the prime.
What to do next: pull the corrected wage determination and reprice labor to NY20260003 for Kings County. Sign and attach the limitations-on-subcontracting certificate. Acknowledge Amendment 1 in the quote itself. And price the exclusion list honestly — if the walk-through showed you conditions the scope does not cover, that is a modification conversation with the Contracting Officer, not a number you bury in the base bid.