Thread: They are doing something about the road!

Originally Posted by Tote

Interestingly there may be a fresh perspective going through the engineering departments of councils. After years of grading the roads and having them turn to crap a week later, Upper Lachlan Council is starting to spend serious dollars on fixing drainage on the roads to our farm. Contractors with excavators have been cleaning out al the culverts and off road drainage to reduce the subsoil moisture under the road and they have discovered that they don't need to grade it every 5 minutes. This is how roads were maintained when I was a kid, funny they forgot how to do it for 40 Years or so...

Regards,
Tote

Probably about when Council workers were replaced by contractors (who put in the lowest bid).

Interestingly, I talked to one of the workers on this job yesterday - he tells me that when they finish the job, NPWS will run dashcam video of the whole job, which will then be looked at in detail by their in house experts before the invoices are paid!

Good news that the road is being fixed John.

Travel down to Victoria and the major roads have large potholes and they'll get worse.
The linemarking contracts haven't gone out for next year because the road re-surfacing budget has been slashed for next year !

Victoria the Bankrupt State.


Colin

This morning I have been out to vote. Surprisingly, there were no workers on the road. Since I had a look at the creek crossing yesterday, they have finished the bottom of it and the far side, but yet to start on this side.

However, the RFS had an information display opposite the school where the polling place is (Ballimore), so I stopped to talk to them about the road. They had heard nothing about any work being done on it, despite it being a critical bit of infrastructure for the area of their responsibility. Their current attitude is - "if there is a fire in that part of the forest, we will wait for it to come to us; the roads are so bad that we are not prepared to risk going in there".

Originally Posted by Tote

Interestingly there may be a fresh perspective going through the engineering departments of councils. After years of grading the roads and having them turn to crap a week later, Upper Lachlan Council is starting to spend serious dollars on fixing drainage on the roads to our farm. Contractors with excavators have been cleaning out al the culverts and off road drainage to reduce the subsoil moisture under the road and they have discovered that they don't need to grade it every 5 minutes. This is how roads were maintained when I was a kid, funny they forgot how to do it for 40 Years or so...

Regards,
Tote

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Probably about when Council workers were replaced by contractors (who put in the lowest bid).

Interestingly, I talked to one of the workers on this job yesterday - he tells me that when they finish the job, NPWS will run dashcam video of the whole job, which will then be looked at in detail by their in house experts before the invoices are paid!

Tote I was going to say or they employed someone competent, but I think John is on to it, a contractor who doesn't get paid if they keep messing up jobs. Although it shows how silly NPWS is to accept dashcam of what could be of a similar road if it is not accompanied by GPS location, unless the person approving the works is very familiar with the area. I have seen some funny things go on to fool auditors, inspectors, clerks of works in my time.

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

Tote I was going to say or they employed someone competent, but I think John is on to it, a contractor who doesn't get paid if they keep messing up jobs. Although it shows how silly NPWS is to accept dashcam of what could be of a similar road if it is not accompanied by GPS location, unless the person approving the works is very familiar with the area. I have seen some funny things go on to fool auditors, inspectors, clerks of works in my time.

The dashcam is collected by local NPWS staff, not the contractor, and is sent to the departments engineers and bean counters to assess whether the contract terms are met. I assume they use a dashcam that collects GPS, but in any case the spots requiring remediation could just be referred to by a timestamp, as the local office will have a copy of the video. Certainly the contractor's workers are clear that they expect their work to be inspected, and not just by the local staff. The video, of course, remains a permanent record of the work.

Not much checking on road repairs around here.

They resurfaced our street,which is straight,around 1.5Km long,and the surface was more bumpy and rough than the old surface.

After 3 months i emailed the council,and they emailed back,saying we checked it and you are correct,it needs to be re done,which was done about 6 weeks later.

Seems it had not been checked after the contractor had completed the works,and i bet they were paid.

i wonder if the contractor re did the road at no cost,i doubt it?