Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Ever notice the HWY dept keeps digging up the same road every year once it complete. Better yet see them build a bridge 300 feet span, and took them 2 years to complete, only to take down a year later and build it bigger/wider. So anybody works for the HWY dept and wonder if they are really milking it for job security or does it really take that long to build or lay down?
I'm efficient, I have to dig the same hole multiple times to check my efficiency between the two different times, how else do I know I'm digging correctly?
I'm efficient, I have to dig the same hole multiple times to check my efficiency between the two different times, how else do I know I'm digging correctly?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,642 posts, read 81,368,328 times
Reputation: 57893
Most city and state highway department projects are finished late and over budget. Much of that is the "red tape" of the bureaucracy, having to use the lowest bidders, yet requiring them to pay prevailing wage salaries, but there are also some legitimate and very common reasons, such as weather delays, and delays from finding unexpected buried items such as native burial grounds. There is still a lot of waste in many cases. I worked at a place where we constantly got calls on rainy days with citizens reporting that one of our crews was sitting in the back of their truck playing cards all day. This was back in the 1980s, but at the time the union contract for our surveyors at the time called for them to not have to work in the rain. They were in fact being paid full salary to sit and wait to see if it stopped.
Public works (government construction projects) are almost always awarded on a low bid basis. This means that a set of construction documents are created, and private companies then have the opportunity to bid on the work. The company that can do it for the lowest amount gets the job. This gives each company that wants the contract an economic incentive to give a low price (so that they can get the job) and make sure that their staff actually work, otherwise they lose money.
The contracting process isn’t substantially different from a private sector construction project, we just don’t make too many private roads or bridges, so the public perception is that time is wasted, based on inadequate information.
When you see roads being built, then torn up, that is usually a result of different companies or agencies doing different projects without coordination. An example might be the county paving a road, but a year or two later the city needs to repair water mains under that road. It gets torn up by the city, who needs to pay to have it repaved. A year after that, the cable company may want to lay fiber optic cable, so the road gets torn up again, and repaved by the cable company. Where there is some communication between jurisdictions, agencies and companies, it isn’t perfect, and some things, like a water main repair, cannot be predicted accurately.
Ever notice the HWY dept keeps digging up the same road every year once it complete. Better yet see them build a bridge 300 feet span, and took them 2 years to complete, only to take down a year later and build it bigger/wider. So anybody works for the HWY dept and wonder if they are really milking it for job security or does it really take that long to build or lay down?
Had the state lay down a nice long 1.5 mile roadway. Two lanes in each direction with turn lanes....Center divider with trees about 5-6" thick..............six-seven months later, out come ALL the trees...trashed sent to a chipper. Then they plant little bushes and trees 2" thick....WHAT the absolute @#$%^&*(??
Took them 6 months to fix the manhole issues. The roadway was 1"-2" lower than them, so you had to be a pretty good driver to miss them, or you got a flat or worse a swerve into and bounce off the curbing...
Then, three months after that, they start ripping up the road for installing pipelines they were supposed to 4 months before the road was laid down but "Forgot" that...........
I know it's fun to rip on the hwy dept and gov but most of what you see are actually private sector contractors. And reality is the public is more interested in cheap than either efficient or effective. Low bidders are seldom either and low quality. Reality just isn't as much fun though as ripping on them.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
