Presented on an emergent basis, this appeal and cross-appeal in a public bidding dispute arise from the Edison Township Board of Education's award of a public school construction contract to respondent Vanas Construction Co., Inc. ("Vanas"). Of the three bids submitted by the parties, the bid of cross-appellant Benard Associates, Inc. ("Benard") was the lowest ($14,885,000), the bid of appellant ML, Inc. ("ML") was the second lowest ($14,975,000), and Vanas's bid was the highest ($15,540,000). The School Board deemed Vanas to be the "lowest responsible bidder" under N.J.S.A. 18:18A-4(a), concluding that its bid, unlike those of ML and Benard, did not suffer from any material defects.
ML and Bernard each filed suit in the Law Division to halt and overturn the award to Vanas. On the return date of the order to show cause, the Law Division judge denied plaintiffs' requests for a preliminary injunction and dismissed the case. This court granted an emergent interim stay of the contract award, pending appeal.
The court affirms the Law Division judge's determination that the School Board reasonably rejected ML's bid as materially defective because of the staleness of the information—in what is known as DPMC Form 701 ("the DPMC form")—attesting to the status of work that ML's electrical subcontractor was slated to perform on other pending projects. The DPMC form, which was developed by the New Jersey Department of Treasury, requires each bidder to provide current information about the status of its outstanding work and that of its designated subcontractors. See N.J.A.C. 17:19-2.13 (specifying the required contents of the form).
The School Board reasonably concluded the lengthy gap of over five months between the date of the DPMC form in December 2024 and the bid opening date in June 2025 rendered ML's bid unresponsive. In making that assessment, the School Board had the statutory authority as a local procurement agency to treat the DPMC form's untimeliness more stringently than the Treasury otherwise might have on a State contract. The court reconciles that conclusion with the history of the regulation relating to the form, and which notes Treasury's own practice of deferring a bidder's fulsome disclosure of its work backlog to the time between a bid opening and the bid award. See 48 N.J.R. 1495(a) (proposed Aug. 1, 2016) and 48 N.J.R. 2830(a) (adopted Dec. 19, 2016).
The court also sustains the Law Division's decision to deny relief to Benard. The School Board had a reasonable basis to reject that bid because of its non-compliance with the School Board's bid bond requirements. Unlike Vanas, Benard's bid bond was dated over one month before the opening date of bid submissions and, notably, before a contract Addendum issued in the interim by the School Board had materially altered the project's scope of work and pricing.
The court accordingly modifies the Law Division's decision and converts it from a preliminary ruling to a final ruling that affirms the contract award to Vanas.