The lowest bid wasn't the right bid. Here's why.

Mission_Hills_GC_Bid_Comparison.pdf

Download the full report above. ⬆

We just made the biggest single procurement decision of the Mission Hills project. After a six-week competitive process, EV Initiative is awarding the General Contractor contract for EVII Mission Hills, Inc. to Casco Contractors out of Irvine.

You funded this site. You deserve to see how the call got made.

The four bidders that came to the table:

• Casco Contractors — Irvine, 25 years, woman-owned. Currently in a 10-year owner-operator term at City of Irvine Great Park where they delivered 166 chargers under SCE Charge Ready.
• Driver SPG — Affiliate of C.W. Driver (1919, ENR Top 100). Built every ROVE DC fast charging hub in Southern California. Built Rivian HQ.
• HTA Construction — Long Beach, 8 years. Public footprint is residential ADU and small multifamily.
• Mega Solar — Solar EPC stretching into general contracting for the first time on this project.

The headline numbers:

• Casco: $3.48M all-in
• HTA V2: $3.19M all-in
• Driver SPG: $4.13M all-in
• Mega Solar: $8.66M to $10.76M

If you stop reading at the headline numbers, HTA looks like the obvious pick. They came in $290K under Casco. That is not the bid we were buying.

The reconciliation that flipped the answer.

HTA's number is missing scope. We worked the bid line by line and found about $415K of work that Casco carries but HTA still excludes after two revisions. The full wet utilities stack (sewer, water, modular wetland, detention beyond storm drain alone). Full plumbing detail. Five-foot overexcavation per the soils report. Fire alarm. The LADWP Alt 1 line item which HTA shows on the bid but never priced.

Normalize the bids for scope and HTA lands at $3.67M. That is $180K above Casco for the same delivered project. The fee stack tells the same story: Casco at 5.74% all-in, HTA at 14.77%. For a contractor we would want to repeat program work with, that gap does not close.

Three filters drove the recommendation: scope completeness, category fit, and price relative to scope. Casco hits all three.

Their lead estimator personally priced the ROVE Santa Ana DC fast charging hub at his prior firm. Their superintendent has 20 years of hospitality and high-rise behind him (Hotel Republic, SOHO House DTLA, Westin LAX). Their COO delivered Uber HQ and the Guidewire dining facilities. They have done this exact work, at this exact scale, on this exact category of building.

Mission Hills is a Tesla V4 charging hub with hospitality finishes, premium washrooms, a robotic barista, a food trailer, AI-monitored security, and iconic architectural canopies. Casco builds exactly this.

Driver SPG is a fantastic firm. They came in $646K higher for substantively the same scope. We are holding them for Acton, our next site, where the scale (~9 acres, Tesla Semi Megacharger, ~10 MW peak demand) is squarely in their wheelhouse.

Mega Solar got a respectful redirect to where they are strongest: solar canopy and solar-plus-storage potential at our future sites like Acton and beyond will need that capability eventually.

What this means for the project:

• Letter of Intent issuing to Casco in the coming weeks
• Groundbreaking targeted for June 2026
• Substantial completion targeted for November 2026
• Q1 2027 operational opening on track

The full bid comparison report is attached for those who want to see the line-by-line reconciliation, the bidder profiles in detail, and the Torque Steel canopy steel breakdown.

Round 2 of the cap raise remains open. If you have people in your network who want to come in alongside you, the offering is at invest.highlander.ai/evi.

Please be sure to complete the entire investment process

Questions, or anything you want to dig into deeper? DM me directly.

Best,

Warren Navarro

Chief Operating Officer EV Initiative