Fifteen general contractors opened their envelopes for the New Utrecht High School exterior job at 10:16 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, and one of them wasn't in the same zip code as the rest. Ashnu International, Inc. came in at $16,813,919. The next bid was $19,231,000. That's a $2,417,081 gap between first and second, on a job where the rest of the field was bunched.

The job is NYC School Construction Authority solicitation 26-22876D: parapets, flood elimination, windows, roofs and exterior masonry at New Utrecht High School, 1601 80th Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It's general construction with a heavy masonry-and-roofing core, the kind of package the SCA has been putting out all spring. It's on our board as RFI-000509.

Here's the tab. Ashnu International, Inc. led at $16,813,919. Whitestone Construction Corp. was second at $19,231,000, Maven Construction Corp. third at $19,462,000 and BQE Industries, Inc. fourth at $19,500,000. The high bid was Padilla Construction Services, Inc. at $26,800,000. The median of all 15 was $20,333,000, so the low number sits 17.3% under the middle of the room. The top-to-bottom spread is 59.4%. Look at second through fourth: three firms inside $269,000 of each other. That's what a crowded market price looks like. The low bid is 14.4% below it.

Now, a number that far out front isn't a verdict on anybody. It can mean a sharper takeoff, a different read of the flood-elimination scope, or a mistake the bidder will stand behind or ask to fix. The SCA sorts that out before it names a winner. The SCA did not post an engineer's estimate with the tab. Apparent low is not an award.

Why is the SCA bundling five trades into one job? Its own capital plan spells it out. The February 2025 amendment to the 2025-2029 plan calls water infiltration "the single greatest cause of accelerated deterioration" of school buildings. When the SCA's building condition survey rates roofs, parapets, windows or masonry "poor" or "fair to poor," the other exterior pieces rated fair or worse get folded into the same project. That same plan carried $750.5 million for flood elimination. The City Council's review of the February 2026 amendment shows that line at $591.8 million, inside a $2.75 billion exteriors budget.

Why this matters. If you price masonry, roofing, windows or waterproofing, this is the bread-and-butter SCA job, and there are a lot of them. A 14.4% gap to second is a big opening on a job this size, and the whole field will watch it through award.

What to do next. Subs and suppliers: price to the apparent low, but keep your number alive with the second bidder too until the SCA makes its call. Watch the SCA's bid tabulation for solicitation 26-22876D; the award flag and the named Wicks subcontractors show up there once the authority decides.

Update, Sept. 28, 2026: The SCA's bid tabulation for 26-22876D now marks Whitestone Construction Corp., the second bidder at $19,231,000, as the awarded bidder and lists it as the lowest responsive bidder, with A&E Electrical Systems Corp named as its electrical subcontractor. The record gives no reason Ashnu International, Inc.'s bid was not taken.