Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Taylor wants answers from roadbuilders
I think I can give him an insight into what the problem is.
I've actually been thinking of late that all of these small road contracts all over the place must be a nightmare for contractors bidding. The reality is most if not all business ventures nowwadays are the bigger the better but not just bigger but bigger and all in generally the same location. Especially since the set up and prep required for an ashpalt plant isn't something to be taken lightly and bid on willy nilly. If it was cold ashphalt Chinese ashphalt it wouldn't be so bad but the majority of these jobs require hot ashpalt.
Personally I think they could get lower bids and more if they concentrated their road work to a certain part of the province each year with just maintenance for the remainder of the province for that year. contractors could also form alliances to bid on these larger contracts or subcontract out if one larger contractor wanted to out bid others. This kind of strategy would have to be cyclical with different sections of the province getting attention each year.
Now Labrador is going to need an Ashphalt plant this year what with the proposed paving of of the section between Happy Valley Goose Bay and Lab West. Supposedly this is going to be done with cold ashpalt but it still needs to be made and mixed with a ashpalt plant just the temperatures and distances can be more forgiving.
The other area of the province I would recommend concentrating on this year would be the northern peninsula seeing as it is now apart of the National Highway System NHS.
I'll always remember German work crews repairing a pot hole. They would cut out a 3 square metre hole and dig down to the subgrade 6 feet below frost and rebuild the road bed from their up compacting the differnet grade fill and using geotech as they went. This was no small task they would use sheets of 1 inch thich steel to make the road usable at night and would take generally speaking a month to repair one pot hole.
But it never came back I'll guarantee you that.
If you have a different hypothesis drop Mr taylor a line.
trevortaylor@gov.nl.ca
I've actually been thinking of late that all of these small road contracts all over the place must be a nightmare for contractors bidding. The reality is most if not all business ventures nowwadays are the bigger the better but not just bigger but bigger and all in generally the same location. Especially since the set up and prep required for an ashpalt plant isn't something to be taken lightly and bid on willy nilly. If it was cold ashphalt Chinese ashphalt it wouldn't be so bad but the majority of these jobs require hot ashpalt.
Personally I think they could get lower bids and more if they concentrated their road work to a certain part of the province each year with just maintenance for the remainder of the province for that year. contractors could also form alliances to bid on these larger contracts or subcontract out if one larger contractor wanted to out bid others. This kind of strategy would have to be cyclical with different sections of the province getting attention each year.
Now Labrador is going to need an Ashphalt plant this year what with the proposed paving of of the section between Happy Valley Goose Bay and Lab West. Supposedly this is going to be done with cold ashpalt but it still needs to be made and mixed with a ashpalt plant just the temperatures and distances can be more forgiving.
The other area of the province I would recommend concentrating on this year would be the northern peninsula seeing as it is now apart of the National Highway System NHS.
I'll always remember German work crews repairing a pot hole. They would cut out a 3 square metre hole and dig down to the subgrade 6 feet below frost and rebuild the road bed from their up compacting the differnet grade fill and using geotech as they went. This was no small task they would use sheets of 1 inch thich steel to make the road usable at night and would take generally speaking a month to repair one pot hole.
But it never came back I'll guarantee you that.
If you have a different hypothesis drop Mr taylor a line.
trevortaylor@gov.nl.ca
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