graders/snowplows

[cowman]

In the municipality I live in all grading/snowplowing is contracted out. You might get a good one or you might get a dud, but whatever, you will get the lowest tender come what may! The new contract just came out and there have been some changes. One contractor moved very agressively and outbid some of the "old boys" who had a contract for a certain area for years.
Linda you might be interested because I believe your area might be affected?
The young guy we have in our area is about the best operator we've ever had...does a real good job...and he is back in for another 3 years so we are happy! An area to the south of us saw the old operator(20 years) lose the contract and I imagine a few people will not be happy campers! A few years ago one of the older better operators lost the contract and the people in that area got together and told the councillor if he got the boot, then she would be gone in the next election! And voila, suddenly the county reversed the tendor and he was back in! So much for the tender system!

[cowman]

political pressure at work cowman. So much for unbiased decision making !!!

[Horse]

How does this tender work? Who sends them out to work and is there a minimum hrs per month or a maximum. The reason I wonder is I live on a secondary hywy and the plow trucks go by when there is no more than 6 snow flakes and they do a fair job when it realy does snow I just wonder do they decide when to plow and then send in bills? If that is the case I think mabey I should thade in the tractor on a maintainer.

[Horse]

the secondary highway tenders are a different matter, they are bid on a very large scale and usually combined with primary highway contract maintenance. When they decide to plow is based on numerous things one of which can be a call from the RCMP indicating that conditions are unsafe and sanding, plowing etc. is necessary.
Contractors have a road foreman who usually travels the roads at various times, particularly during inclement weather and decides when to call out plow and or sanding trucks.

Contracts for local municipal roads are usually based on the number of miles per grader beat and the level of service desired.

If, for instance the roads are to be cleared within two days of a major snow fall the contractor will bid accordingly. As they will if they are required to do private driveways etc.

As for calling out plows in winter storms the municipality usually has one public works staff on call and they are responsible for checking roads and deciding when to call in the contractor.
Most municipal contracts have a minimum amount attached .

[dalek]

All of the roads in our township are done by municipal employees but the next township over contracts out a lot. Ends up with some strange situations, one farmer I know has had a contract for several roads for a long time. He's now plowing with a JD 7520 with a truck plow on the front and a wing mounted on the side of the tractor. Does a nice job plowing but then they send the township sander after him anyway so why not have a plow on the front of the sander?

[dalek]

plows on the front of sanding trucks are fine to do intersectons and blow open roads after a major snowfall but it is necessary to use the snowplows with wings on them to push the snow back into the ditch etc.

[wilagro]

Contracting snow removal on a municipal or county level is for the most part, a STUPID practice. The constractor becomes the BOSS and decides what and when the works gets done, In too many cases they take the money alright but don't perform as well as county controlled plows do.
The same with our Alberta Highways maintenance contracts. One of the dumbest things that Alberta ever did. The roads look like crap, poor signage, dirty signage, poor lines...just a general crappy mess.
Premier Manning's gov't did a far superior job, but for 35 years now many of our highways have just plain deteriorated thanks to non-thinkers like Steve West and others who were in our PC gov't.

[cowman]

Heres how they do it in Red Deer County: 3 year tenders. Lowest tender usually but not always...they have an out clause?
No minimum. A county employee(contract co-ordinator) decides when they plow or grade. He gets input from ratepayers, councillors, cops etc. but it is his decision mostly...if he starts to get to many hours piling up the operations manager will be talking to him! All plows are equipped with GPS which not only tells how many miles done, but hours, speed, whether the blade is down!
The contract co-ordinator also does quality control to make sure a decent job is being done? If the work isn't up to snuff they have a clause where they can skid the operator.
The graders are paid by the hour and I think generally $72/hour is pretty close to average? They have almost starved to death this winter!

[cowman]

wilgro, I agree with you. Our county contracted out one grader beat for a two year trial period and it cost a significant amount more for a lesser service, and the county supplied the grader blades.
The biggest drawback to municipalities doing their own road maintenance is the availability of reliable staff that are willing to work for wages significantly less than industry, unless the mindset is what our county in their wisdom has just done, give staff a 19% salary increase over 3 years !!!
And the staff were in the top of the provincial wage scale the way it was !!

[cowman]

When Red Deer County first went with this contracting out they did some studies on costs? At that time they figured it cost $58/hour to run the grader. The first contracts were in that $63/hour range.
The kicker was when the grader was sitting, basically so was the operator! As well as interest, depreciation, benifits etc.?
Now they used to send these old boys out to pretend to cut brush or something but in reality it was a nice little BS session around a bonfire!
Now the powers that be claim that by contracting out all the public works and field services they saved $1.5 million. The CAO tells me he will show me the books if I don't believe him! But I suspect he is telling the truth.
Some people claim the service has gone downhill and that might or might not be true? Kind of hard to tell when the traffic has probably tripled due to all the crazy oil field activity.

[cowman]

grader operators were guaranteed a certain amount each month in our county but they had to come in to the shop everyday for four hours and also had to work on brushing and sign crews when they weren't operating graders. It worked well and the older, experienced operators were retained in the system. Now some of them have retired but they are still back at an hourly rate in the summer to cover off vacations etc.

[cowman]

emerald: I find it pretty amazing that your municipality would give their employees a 19% raise? Are they unionized?
Red Deer county gives their employees a cost of living raise each year on Jan. 1st. This year it was 3.5%? Last year it was 3%? Councillors get the same raise every year.

[cowman]

I am disgusted with the raise given here, the outside staff are unionized the inside workers are not, and they get the same increase, as does council who is already being paid in the top rate of all municipal councillors across the province.
The CEO here has this new council bamboozled and he advised that if they didn't increase the salary by a significant amount they would lose all the staff to industry !!! The staff were in the upper end of municipal salaries as it was.

[cakadu]

3.5% is not too bad considering some don't see anywhere near that and as far as I know they aren't unionized. Don't forget that our councillors voted themselves a 47% raise just over 2 years ago now.

[cakadu]

The former council here voted themselves a huge raise on compensation, but to the credit of the current council they did review it and take a decrease after the last election.