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I was driving around Seattle yesterday through some construction zones and since it was Saturday all the construction equipment was sitting there idle while traffic was backed on this congested road. The construction site was deserted. The project won't be finished for many months.
I am not real knowledgeable about bids for construction, but I guess it mostly goes to the lowest bidder, but I am thinking maybe in the heaviest congested areas maybe they should change that to who gets the job done fastest, even it means working 3 shifts 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I know that will be more expensive in the short run, but these back ups in urban areas for months on end is ridiculous.
Why have construction workers only work one shift 5 days a week while traffic is backing up day after day for months on end?
Does it make more sense to pay more now and get the job done faster?
Most construction contracts have a completion date. It's up to the company to manage their work to hit that date. Some contracts will have a bonus, if you will, for completing the project ahead of schedule.
The engineers designing the project have a pretty good idea of the time needed for completion. If it's a "critical" project (say the only bridge connection within several miles) then many times the contract will have the terms you describe, or similar ones.
You can always tell which projects have a scheduled completion date and which do not. Those with such a date usually have a lot of workers, while the ones with none only sporadically. I have seen a project that could have been done in three months drag out to over a year because the contractor was using it as fill-in work.
You can always tell which projects have a scheduled completion date and which do not. Those with such a date usually have a lot of workers, while the ones with none only sporadically. I have seen a project that could have been done in three months drag out to over a year because the contractor was using it as fill-in work.
Yes! This drives me nuts, too. It makes me wonder how we ever got projects done in the past, such as building the entire interstate highway system, especially some of these long coast-to-coast ones, because now it'll take crews half a year to replace just a short stretch of highway, and much longer if a bridge is involved.
I don't think the Interstates were on a specific schedule. After all, there was no existing traffic to deal with on most of the routes. I know that as late as 1975 I-70 through Indy was still incomplete. That is nearly 20 years after the program started.
You're assuming the winner of the bids are chosen by meeting either of those requirements. It could be whichever contractor meets the government's arcane rules, a no-bid contract, or by some procedure unknown to mere mortals.
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