NYC DDC has pushed the bid date on its Safe Routes to Schools job in Queens six times since the solicitation posted. The latest move landed September 9, when the agency's fourth postponement notice reset the opening to October 5 — submission runs 8:30 to 11 a.m., with the opening at 11:30. The job, solicitation 85026B0094 (in-house name HWCSCHPQN), carries a $22,538,311 agency estimate, funded through the Federal Transit Administration.

Here's the trap for anyone bidding it cold. DDC's PASSPort system runs two records for this job: Round 1, extranet number 36705, is closed; Round 2, record 37150, is the live one with the real documents. The City Record notice still prints the original June 17 bid date. Find this job through City Record without cross-checking PASSPort, and you're bidding off a dead page.

“Find this job through City Record without cross-checking PASSPort, and you're bidding off a dead page.”

The scope is street work spread across eight schools: P.S. 050 Talfourd Lawn, P.S. 071 Forest, P.S. 089 Elmhurst, P.S. 220 Edward Mandel, I.S. 125 Thomas J. McCann Woodside, J.H.S. 210 Elizabeth Blackwell, St. Elizabeth Catholic Academy and EPIC High School – North. Curb extensions, pavement markings, pedestrian ramps, catch basins, street lighting and traffic signal work run through a 316-line bid schedule — 2,124 tons of asphalt mix, more than 31,000 square yards of wearing course, 38 catch basins and close to 59,000 square feet of sidewalk. Arora and Associates, P.C. is the designer of record.

Federal money rewrites a few of the usual city rules. Davis-Bacon wages sit on top of the state's Labor Law 220 schedule, with federal rules controlling wherever the two disagree. Retainage, normally 5% on a DDC contract, gets struck outright — the FTA pages delete Article 21 word for word, leaving a section that literally reads "(NO TEXT)." The M/WBE goal that would ordinarily apply is gone too; the FTA pages order it stripped and set the DBE goal at zero percent. That's federal funding overriding the city's own rules, not DDC's call.

The rest of the risk language is straight DDC: liquidated damages of $11,000 a day past substantial completion on the 730-day term, with a winter-weather adjustment built in; bid security and bonds kicking in at a $1 million bid; and LIRR, MTA, Verizon, Con Edison and National Grid as additional insureds.

So why does a fully designed, federally approved $22.5 million job keep sliding? The postponement notices don't say. No pre-bid meeting is scheduled, so three rounds of addenda and four postponements are the whole paper trail. The date to circle is October 5 at 11:30 a.m., off PASSPort's live Round 2 record — six moves in three months is a pattern, and the smart bid is the one ready to see a seventh.