Engineering Services for New Carbon Coal Substation – Design, Project Management, and Full Project Delivery

The City of Gallup, New Mexico is soliciting proposals through Request for Proposal No. 2025/2026/06 for comprehensive engineering services to design, manage, and deliver a new 115kV to 13.2kV substation in the Carbon Coal Road area as a capital improvement initiative by the Electric Department. The procurement encompasses full turnkey responsibility including engineering design, procurement support, construction coordination, testing, commissioning, and project closeout. The contract term extends from 2026 through 2027 with options for renewal for up to three additional one-year periods through 2030. Required qualifications mandate that the lead electrical engineer be licensed in New Mexico and that the lead firm or principals possess a minimum of 10 years of continuous experience in distribution, substations, transmission, or generation with knowledge of state and federal power system regulations. The firm must maintain Worker's Compensation Insurance with statutory coverage, Comprehensive General Liability Insurance of $1,000,000 per occurrence, and Comprehensive Automobile Liability Insurance of $1,000,000 per person/per accident. Evaluation criteria include firm history and experience (20 points), capacity and capability to provide services (20 points), past record of performance and references (20 points), qualifications of key personnel (30 points), cost (10 points), and local/state/veterans preference (10 points), for a total of 100 base points. Technical proposals are limited to 25 numbered pages excluding cover materials, resumes, insurance certificates, and cost proposals. The deadline for submitting questions is May 11, 2026, with proposals due on May 26, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. local time via the City's electronic procurement portal at https://procurement.opengov.com/portal/gallupnm.

The City of Gallup has established set-aside designations available to qualified entities, including a State of New Mexico Resident Business preference of up to 8 percent of total points and a Resident Veterans Business preference of up to 10 percent for appropriately certified entities; joint proposals will have preferences reduced proportionally based on the percentage of work performed by non-resident businesses. Pricing shall be evaluated on competitiveness and value rather than lowest bid alone, with the lowest-cost responsive offeror receiving 10 points and others receiving proportional points based on the established formula. The selected contractor will serve as the primary point of contact through a dedicated Project Manager and will assume sole responsibility for coordination of all engineering disciplines, subconsultants, and vendors. Either party may terminate the contract without cause upon thirty days' written notice, or for cause if the breaching party fails to cure within fifteen days of written notice, except for safety-related violations which must be corrected within twenty-four hours. All communications regarding the procurement must be conducted through the OpenGov platform's Question/Answer section, and no alternative submission methods are accepted. No specific budget range or award value is provided in the solicitation documents.