In the simplest terms possible, how is road construction planned? It always looks like such a huge mess, and then all of a sudden one day it doesn’t. What goes into the planning and timeline of major road construction?
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Someone tells the local government something needs to be done. This can come from many sources. Social media complaints, complaint actually filed with the government, requested by a group of people like an HOA or group of businesses in the same area, regular maintenance or just the government being proactive and not having to be told to fix things.
Where ever you are there is some part of your government that has the responsibility of transportation and roads. They will assess what action needs to be taken maintenance and repairs, expansion or a complete overhaul; and at what timeline. These decisions are mainly made by cost benefit analysis, political or aesthetic reasons. Most governments require a bidding process to hire contractors to do the work. The government will propose plans for the project or a contract that lasts some amount of time and cover multiple projects. They will send these to multiple contractors and the contractors will return a bid( prices and available timetables). The government will then make a choice of the contractors and finalize a timetable. The reason most governments have a bidding process is to stop someone giving the job to their own company or one of their friends and charging the government an inflated price to line their pockets, cheating tax payers.
That is vaguely how pretty much all road construction is planned. Obviously this varies from place to place and can be simpler or more complicated.
As to why something can be a big mess and be all gone the next day. There are many factors involved.
Construction and destruction is always messy and often a lot of clean up and little things are left to the end. It’s a goldilocks zone. Too messy and you lose production and get complaints. Too clean and you needlessly losing money being overzealous about being clean and organized.
Time vs money vs inconvenience
You have 2000 feet of road that need to be torn up and repaved do you want to hire a 10 guy crew to do it 500 feet at a time over 4 weeks, a 25 guy crew to do half in 1 week and finish it the next or a 60 guy crew to do all of it at once in 1 week? Faster is more expensive. Then you have to balance that with the inconvenience caused to travelers. How used is the road? Are there coveinent detours?
All of this can be really complicated or really simple, in between, or a mix. Where you are can have a major effect on this. A big city will have a lot more rules, regulations, and safety codes than a rural county will; but the city will have a more diverse choice of contractors and timetables.
If your asking about the timetable of the actual road construction that is determined by the job and the contractor’s equipment and labor. They might do the entire job one step at a time ,complete a section and then move on to the next or a mix. Ripping up more road than you have the ability to repair at one time will create more congestion. But if you only have 1 machine that rips up the road it might be more profitable to do it all at once and then send that machine elsewhere to make more money. Rather than keep the machine on that 1 job for the entire duration. Contractors will set up their company to operate in stages. Each stage might have different equipment, materials and personel. And these stages will very from company to company.
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