ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) — Ten companies. Ten bids. All of them well below the architect’s estimated cost of $1.670 million. Considering they’d advertised a restroom renovation project at the airport, city leaders were pleased with the response.

When the sealed bids were opened on an October afternoon in 2013, the lowest bidder — Enterprise Builders Corporation — offered the city a staggeringly good deal: $1.147 million. The bid was so low that the project’s architect was concerned there was some sort of mistake. There wasn’t.

But as the city prepared to award Enterprise the contract, it was quietly turning another planned project at the airport into a change order. The renovation of an emergency operations suite, a training room, hallways below the terminal and a handful of smaller restrooms was supposed to be publicly bid — like the project that had just saved the city $500,000.

The change order turned a $1.147 million project into a $2.331 million deal by the time the Enterprise swept up the last dust at the Albuquerque Sunport and handed over the instruction manuals to the new break room appliances.

Mayor Richard J. Berry insisted the decision to avoid the public bid process was normal and moreover, that it was good government.

“I think, based on my cursory understanding, no question taxpayers saved a bunch of money here,” Berry said. “That’s good. The (approval) signatures were there. At that point, I look at it as a taxpayer and say, ‘It looks like folks at the city did their job.'”

A series of conversations between KRQE News 13 and several contractors and architects; emails between the city’s project manager, the architect for the work and Enterprise; and a closer examination of the math behind the decision suggests the move to avoid publicly bidding the change order wasn’t standard practice and didn’t save the city a dime.

Records reviewed by KRQE News 13 through a New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act request raise questions about the timing of the change order negotiations and whether the city buried evidence of their existence beneath construction documents that imply the change order wasn’t considered until months after the contract had been awarded to the company.

Enterprise Builders Corporation, co-owned by former Republican State Representative David Doyle, bid close to $125,000 less than the second-lowest bidder for the project. In construction, that difference is considered money left on the table by the winner. On a $1.147 million project, Enterprise’s bid won the company the contract, but left a lot of money on the table.

Repeated phone calls and emails to Doyle asking to discuss the project were not returned.

Emails from the project’s architect, David Hassard, show the city was pushing to finalize a price on the change order before it gave Enterprise a contract that would force the company to honor its low bid.

Hassard wrote to the city’s project manager, Jack Scherer, that the company’s mark-up rate — part of the cost proposal that includes profit — was about $125,000 higher than expected, and that “it is above what one might expect when competitively bid.”

While the city asked the company to “sharpen its pencils” and come back with a lower proposal, the emails show that at the same time, the city worked to help Enterprise ease its burden.

Two key parts of the change order, fire alarms and controls for the heating and cooling system were farmed out to other contractors. The work still got done, but Enterprise didn’t have to pay for it.

The city also let the company install cheaper floor tiles, bathroom stalls and window blinds. It removed part of the project that called for a window in the training room.

The change order now called for less work and lower-quality finishings, but the city’s estimate for the cost didn’t change. If it had, it would have shown the company’s estimate was higher than the architect’s anticipated cost.

The emails show the city worked hard to get the deal done before December 3, 2013. That was the day Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry sent the notice of award to Doyle.

A city councilor presented with KRQE News 13’s findings has asked the city’s Office of Internal Audit to review the contract and change order, and suggest changes to city procurement rules.

“I can’t see necessarily that we’ve violated the letter of the rules, but it seems to me the spirit was violated,” said Councilor Isaac Benton. A contractor and architect by trade, Benton was especially concerned about the timing of the decision.

Less than two months before the change order was negotiated, Perry sent the council an update on the Sunport renovation schedule. It said the operations center work that formed the bulk of the change order would be sent out to bid within weeks of the restroom renovation project.

Benton said the city should have figured out a way to bid the work that would become a change order.

“They could have withdrawn the advertisement for bid and started over with the combined project if that’s what they intended to do,” he said. “And that’s what bothers me is that it seems like that’s what they intended to do from the (beginning). It gives that appearance.”

Whatever the change order looked like, city documents in the project file made the truth about the negotiations hard to find.

The two letters asking for approval of the change order have February dates on them. The order itself was prepared on Valentine’s Day. All the signatures indicating city approval up to the CAO Perry have dates of February or March.

The lone mention of a November estimate on the change order comes at the top of a column in Enterprise’s spread sheet comparison of its cost proposals — November 22, 2013.

The city offered four projects to KRQE News 13 as proof that the practice of turning planned projects into change orders was more common than it appeared. All the projects included change orders, some sizable, but none of them indicated that the change orders were negotiated before the initial contract was signed.

Several were extensions of “unit cost bids” where the city paid a set amount for drain pipe or street signs. The Sunport contract was based on what’s referred to as a lump sum, not a unit price.