A Honolulu company has been awarded the first four contracts under the state’s $100 million initiative to cool 1,000 public school classrooms — signaling a major step forward for the project, which has suffered setbacks amid the state’s booming construction market.

C C Engineering &Construction Inc. emerged as the lowest bidder on cooling projects for four Oahu schools on the Department of Education’s priority list for air conditioning: Aliamanu Elementary, August Ahrens Elementary in Waipahu, Kamaile Academy in Waianae and Nanakuli Elementary.

The general contractor submitted bids totaling just over $1.96 million for the four projects, which involve solar-powered air conditioning for 25 portable classrooms as well as some remediation work for possible roof repairs and painting. That breaks down to an average of about $78,000 per classroom — almost double the per-classroom estimate the Department of Education had been budgeting but far below some of the other bids submitted.

For example, C C Engineering &Construction’s bid on the five-classroom cooling project at Aliamanu Elementary came in roughly $100,000 less per classroom than the highest bid. The company had bid $404,100 for the work, or $80,820 per classroom, compared with a bid from Economy Plumbing &Sheet Metal for $902,700, or $180,540 per classroom.

For Nanakuli Elementary’s six-classroom project, C C Engineering &Construction’s bid came in roughly $41,000 less per classroom than the next-lowest bid. The company bid $528,000 for the work, while Greenpath Technologies submitted a bid for $772,543.

John Cheung, president of C C Engineering &Construction, said his company hopes to start the work as soon as possible.

“We were lucky to submit the lowest bids,” Cheung told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “We are excited to be part of this process to cool down these classrooms, and we are looking at different ways to save the DOE money.”

He described his company as a small business, with typically 20 to 30 employees on hand, depending on demand. Cheung said he’s not sure why some of the other bids came in so high.

“When you are bidding on jobs, it depends on how the contractor looks at the job at the time that they do the estimate,” Cheung said. “So I cannot and I don’t know how they priced it out. I can only say that we submitted very competitive bids and we were the low bidders.”

Department of Education officials say they are working with contractors to further bring down costs, where possible, within procurement rules.

“Communication with contractors on our specific needs for cooling classrooms was key in getting to this point, and it will continue as we move forward,” said DOE spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz. “This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. We’re relieved and excited to get these projects for this initiative underway.”

Using early industry estimates, DOE officials had been budgeting $40,000 as an “estimated median per classroom” cost to cover equipment and installation of air conditioners and other heat abatement measures. The DOE had estimated it could complete the project for roughly $45 million, with most schools receiving solar-powered air conditioners. (The legislation providing $100 million for the initiative requires spending the funds on “equipment and installation costs for air conditioning, other heat abatement measures, energy efficient lighting and other energy efficiency measures” to help offset energy use.)

But in June when the initial round of bids for projects at six schools started coming in significantly over budget — including a proposal as high as $360,770 to cool one portable classroom in Leeward Oahu — the department halted the solicitation of bids.

DOE officials pointed to increased labor costs due to the state’s hot construction market and an initially limited number of companies that were pre-qualified to bid, but some general contractors complained that the department’s project specifications were overly complex.

The department put most of the work out for bid again in early July and doubled the pool of pre-qualified contractors to 36 companies from 18. It also held a so-called pre-bid meeting late last month with contractors to answer questions about the projects.

“Our facilities development branch presented information that basically clarified the scope and the bid process,” Tracy Okumura, executive assistant in the department’s School Facilities and Support Services Branch, said in an update last week to the Board of Education.

He said some of the feedback from contractors “resulted in some changes to the program, which we are hoping will reflect better pricing” moving forward.

Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association and a longtime advocate for cooling public school classrooms, contends the latest bids are still too high. He pointed to a handful of pilot projects in schools on Oahu and Molokai that have installed energy-efficient cooling systems for closer to $20,000 per classroom, without the need for expensive electrical upgrades.

“I’m completely frustrated,” Rosenlee said in an interview. “These companies are bidding $200,000 per classroom, and the winning bids are $80,000 per classroom. When I see those numbers, what it represents to me is, there are thousands of classrooms and tens of thousands of students that will never see air conditioning in their classrooms.”

He wants to see the project paused until costs can be reined in.

“I think the DOE and the governor need to look at different ways of doing this — and this may mean one contractor for the entire state,” Rosenlee said. “One contractor may get very lucky, but the reality is the ones who will benefit most is the students. … It’s better to do the job right than to do it fast.”

To cope with the heat in the meantime, he’s been encouraging the Depart-ment of Education and Board of Education to consider “heat days,” or closing down schools when temperatures get too high in the classroom.

“Students and teachers should not be subjected to environments that are so unhealthy that it can damage their health,” he said. “We need to put in air conditioning because it’s just so unbearable, and in the interim we need to have heat days.”

Of the 11,806 DOE classrooms across the state, roughly 4,400 have air conditioning. Fifty schools — or 19 percent of DOE schools — had at least 90 percent of their classrooms air-conditioned as of last week.

The goal under the DOE’s heat abatement program is for classroom temperatures to be at 76 degrees. Mechanical cooling is planned for classrooms in which heat abatement efforts — such as ceiling fans, solar-powered vents to draw out hot air and heat-reflective roof systems — don’t sufficiently bring down the temperature.

Heat abatement projects, which are separate from the 1,000-classrooms initiative, are ongoing. Reflective roof coatings have been applied to 423 portable classrooms, 139 classrooms have received new ceiling fans and 109 classrooms are equipped with portable air conditioners.