The Town of Mamaroneck opened nine bids at 11 a.m. on September 4 for contract TA-26-12, the Senior Center Roof Replacement. The scope, in the town engineering department's words, is replacing the existing asphalt shingle and asphalt roll roofing and the accessory work to finish the roofing system. It is a small job. It drew a crowd.
Sandhu Contracting Inc., of Astoria, Queens, is low at $129,000. VAD Contractors Inc. is second at $157,300. Then come Lisi Contracting at $194,900, Nuvista Designs General Contractors at $238,000, Milcon Construction Corp. at $242,700, NUA Construction Corp. at $295,000, Precision Roofing at $312,000, Raja Contractors at $390,000 and Barrett at $409,000. Every total includes the same $15,000 lump sum for miscellaneous additional work the town wrote into the form. Lisi's form showed $215,400; the town's tab marks it a math error and carries the corrected $194,900.
The spread is the story under the story. From $129,000 to $409,000 is $280,000, or 217.1 percent: the high bid is more than three times the low. Sandhu beat VAD by $28,300, or 21.9 percent. The middle bid of the nine, Milcon's $242,700, is nearly double the low. That is not a tight read on a roof. That is nine shops looking at the same drawings and seeing very different jobs.
Unlike most openings we report, this one already has a recommendation behind it. The deputy town engineer's September 9 memo calls Sandhu the lowest responsive, responsible bidder, says the town's architect checked Sandhu's references on municipal work and heard positive feedback, and recommends taking both add alternates: Alternate 1, removing and replacing the soffits, which Sandhu priced at $27,000, and Alternate 2, copper step flashing around the chimneys, at $2,500. That brings the recommended award to $158,500, paid from capital project H6758, which the memo says covers it in full. The resolution to award was on the Town Board's September 16 agenda. A recommendation is not a signed contract, so watch the adopted minutes. The award packet lists no M/WBE goals.
Why this matters. A $129,000 roof in Westchester pulled bidders from Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, Rockland, Orange County and Connecticut. Small municipal roofs are where a lot of shops keep crews busy between bigger jobs, and this tab shows how crowded that lane is. It also shows how alternates move money: the two add-ons grow Sandhu's job by $29,500, or 22.9 percent over the base. When a town takes every alternate, a bidder with a sharp base number and fat alternate prices can price themselves out.
What to do next. Roofing suppliers and sheet-metal subs should look at Sandhu for the shingle, soffit and copper flashing work once the award is final. If you lost this one, get the tab from the town and study the alternates line by line; that is where your next small municipal roof gets won or lost. And check your arithmetic twice before you seal the envelope. The town will fix a math error on the tab, but you do not want yours to be the number it fixes.