Why do road projects take years and years to complete?

[304eer]

Originally Posted by Rickcin

Government employees don’t build roads and roadwork is not contracted on an hourly basis!

Most all roadwork contracts are lump sum contract amounts with unit prices included in the bid that are used when specified quantities are different than the contract documents. Usually the contract documents include a timeframe for the work which include financial penalties for going beyond and incentive payments for finishing early.

Most troubled roadwork, either from not finishing on time or ones that enter into legal disputes along the way are those where the design firm have done a horrible gob with the documents and perhaps that issue has to do with the state or DOT trying to save money on the design firm. It’s a complicated process and to just blame the contractor is very often not the case.

This is more or less correct. I work for a engineering design firm that does a ton of INDOT projects. We hardly make a profit on that work. Work for government agencies are great for stability, but not for company profit. We're hardly doing anything close to milking hours. The quicker we can get these projects done, the better. And as you said, the contacts are finalized prior to our work taking place. There's the occasional change order when something unexpected comes up, but they're not paying us by the hour. Like you said, it's based upon a pre-determined hourly rate (which aren't actually equal to our real hourly rates...usually lower).

Also to get back to the original point of the thread, there's a lot that goes into road projects. You can't just go out there and repair or repave. And if you're interested on what projects Indiana has on their radar, check the STIP.

https://www.in.gov/indot/2348.htm

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by 304eer

This is more or less correct. I work for a engineering design firm that does a ton of INDOT projects. We hardly make a profit on that work. Work for government agencies are great for stability, but not for company profit. We're hardly doing anything close to milking hours. The quicker we can get these projects done, the better. And as you said, the contacts are finalized prior to our work taking place. There's the occasional change order when something unexpected comes up, but they're not paying us by the hour. Like you said, it's based upon a pre-determined hourly rate (which aren't actually equal to our real hourly rates...usually lower).

Also to get back to the original point of the thread, there's a lot that goes into road projects. You can't just go out there and repair or repave. And if you're interested on what projects Indiana has on their radar, check the STIP.

https://www.in.gov/indot/2348.htm

Why don't the contractors urge them to hurry up? At some point, the state dragging its face is also tying up your resources.

[Ed Ferris]

Thanks for the informed comment. However, it still makes no sense for the project to take three years and suddenly be finished in one week, which is what has happened to the US 40 work here in Richmond. If it's one week's work, why wasn't it done three years ago, instead of having the street torn up for all that time, with nobody, or sometimes one crew of three people, working on it? If there's a lot of planning and paperwork, why isn't it done before the road is taken up?
This is a problem I've seen before, in Bedford, so it's not just an accident. The only explanation I can think of is that the contractor tears up the road to make sure the contract is not re-assigned to somebody else, and then sends a crew to work on it only when they don't have anything else to do. This should be prevented by putting a reasonable completion date on the contract.
Unfortunately, INDOT has a "damn the public" attitude.

[304eer]

Originally Posted by Serious Conversation

Why don't the contractors urge them to hurry up? At some point, the state dragging its face is also tying up your resources.

It's really not the state that's dragging. The entire process takes time....were talking thousands of man hours on our end alone. Plus there's mandatory review periods, public comment periods, getting other government agencies approvals, getting FHWA to approve things, etc. Indiana is fairly efficient compared to some states I've worked with. INDOT also has a massive amount of projects right now so it is slowing things a bit more than usual but the good news is that they're addressing a ton of road work.

[304eer]

Originally Posted by Ed Ferris

Thanks for the informed comment. However, it still makes no sense for the project to take three years and suddenly be finished in one week, which is what has happened to the US 40 work here in Richmond. If it's one week's work, why wasn't it done three years ago, instead of having the street torn up for all that time, with nobody, or sometimes one crew of three people, working on it? If there's a lot of planning and paperwork, why isn't it done before the road is taken up?
This is a problem I've seen before, in Bedford, so it's not just an accident. The only explanation I can think of is that the contractor tears up the road to make sure the contract is not re-assigned to somebody else, and then sends a crew to work on it only when they don't have anything else to do. This should be prevented by putting a reasonable completion date on the contract.
Unfortunately, INDOT has a "damn the public" attitude.

Can't really address anything like that. That's all on INDOT and the construction company's end of things. The design firms are long gone by then. Completion dates and time frames are put into contracts. INDOT has and will fire construction firms if dates aren't met, shoddy work, commitments aren't met, etc. That may have been what happened with US 40. Which it then would likely go back through a bidding process. Or maybe some of the work got done and there was an issue with the design. A lot of reasons it may have taken so long but that's definitely an unusual circumstance