:Yawn:

As if every public works project in this country doesn't have cost overruns.

SO the winning bid was 4 million dollars under your own internal estimate.....

And they awarded the bid.

Well.....that's a big red Chinese flag....

and if they didn't take the lowball guess who goes crying to the same circle jerk of super online city governance experts.

Dorsey promised us directly that the contract had a set price, and that overruns would not be passed onto the tax payer

I agree. $4M (almost 30% below) under the engineer's estimate is egregious and would be extremely difficult to justify. Many other agencies would've thrown it out and gone with the next lowest bid.

On the bright side, they only went 30% over it looks like, so while it wasn't the steal that was promised, at least it ended up roughly where it should?

What's crazy is every single homeowner suggestion about hiring contractors says never pick the lowest bid. Why does an entire city ignore this advice?

Like if 3 bids are close sure but when the big is 30% lower than an engineering estimate that's just dumb.

Low bid procurements are pretty standard in this industry and typically have the most potential to yield the best value to the owner. There are no guarantees that going with a higher bid would bring better value, absorb more risk, or be more reliable. That said, accepting a bid that's 30% lower than the engineer's estimate would be very difficult to justify as reasonable unless there were unique circumstances.