NYC Parks just bought marine contractors five more weeks. Addendum No. 1, dated September 11, pushes bids on CNYG-223M, the Citywide Seawall Reconstruction job, to November 2 at 10:30 a.m., filed through PASSPort only. The opening runs at 11:30 a.m. the same day on a Zoom call. The City Record notice that ran September 3 had bids due September 25, so if that date is still on your calendar, cross it out.
The agency's estimate is $11,096,209.81. That money is spread over three waterfronts in three boroughs: Faber Park on the Kill Van Kull in Staten Island, the Shore Parkway promenade between Bay Ridge Avenue and Bay Parkway in Brooklyn, and Whitey Ford Field on the East River in Astoria. The contract lets Parks drop a site but never add one. The ad called it seawall reconstruction. Open the 129-item bid schedule and the 108-sheet drawing set, and you find three different jobs sharing one bid bond.
“Go through all 129 items. There's no such item.”
Faber Park is new wall. A fiberglass sheet-pile bulkhead goes in front of the old timber cribbing, and the spec names CMI UC-50 FRP sheet pile or an approved alternative. That's 4,540 square feet of it, backed by 205 cubic yards of flowable fill pumped in behind it. Shore Parkway is repair work on a granite-faced wall: 3,000 square feet of repointing, crack injection, guardrail post grouting, 12,644 square yards of full-depth asphalt on the path, and a repair to a city combined-sewer outfall, where two chambers have to keep flowing the whole time. Whitey Ford is a concrete gravity wall with a failing stretch that gets a new concrete deadman tied back with 14 steel rods, plus new railing and a high-mast light pole.
Now here's the line to read twice. The Item 20 excavation spec says contaminated soil disposal, hazardous or not, gets paid for separately under its own contract items. Go through all 129 items. There's no such item. Meanwhile the special provisions tell you to assume site soil is urban fill over the state's restricted-residential cleanup limits unless data says otherwise. And the informational soil reports flag lead and zinc at Faber and PAH compounds at two Shore Parkway test pits. That's a trucking-and-tipping bill with no pay line. Get it answered in writing before you price it, or you'll carry it at your own risk.
The clock has teeth too. Substantial completion is 547 calendar days from the order to work. Each site gets its own clock based on its dollar value: 90 days for work between $50,000 and $100,000, 180 days up to $500,000, and 365 days above that. Late sites can draw liquidated damages separately, on top of $1,000 a day for the job as a whole. You have to start within 48 hours of each order to work. The drawings say Shore Parkway goes first. At Faber, work in the pool-deck area has to be turned back over to the city by May 15.
The paperwork is the standard city load, with a few edges. Bid security is 5 percent, by bond or deposit, and payment and performance bonds are each 100 percent. Retainage is 5 percent. Subcontracts can't top 50 percent of the contract price. To qualify, you need at least one similar project completed as prime for a public owner in the last three years. Let's say you're a marine GC with one $4 million bulkhead job on your record. You'd still have to show it compares in size, scope and complexity. Any mismatch between your PASSPort total and your uploaded bid-item spreadsheet can make the bid non-responsive, and the book recommends filing at least 72 hours early.
For subs and suppliers, the M/WBE goal percentages live in Schedule B inside PASSPort, not in the contract book. Your utilization plan goes in with the bid, and waiver requests are due seven calendar days before the due date. There's also a best-efforts goal of 30 percent of construction hours for local community hires. The supply side is specific. The job calls for 42,580 pounds of galvanized rebar, not epoxy-coated. It needs 6,201 feet each of containment boom and turbidity curtain, a little over a mile apiece. Add 228 cubic yards of marine concrete, 431 adhesive anchors, and 1,350 cubic yards of existing riprap to regrade.
What to do next: pull the drawings and the bid-item workbook from the PASSPort listing and check Schedule B for the M/WBE goals. Written questions go through PASSPort no later than seven days before bid time, which is October 26 under the new date. Put the contaminated-soil question and the missing curb-removal item that Item 129 points to at the top of your list. The drawings also require a site visit before you bid, and with three waterfronts in three boroughs, that's a full day of driving. Budget it now, not the week of November 2.