Councillor asks why construction projects don't run six days a week

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A city councillor is wondering why construction projects cannot be completed using a six-day work week model, especially those with a completion date of months in the future.

At last week’s council meeting, Coun. Gerry Lowe and the city’s chief engineer Michael Baker discussed the possibility of requiring contractors working on major construction projects that cause traffic delays and inconvenience to businesses to work on Saturdays, like other municipalities such as Halifax.

Lowe was referring to the construction work that’s currently underway in the area of Peters Street from Waterloo Street to Coburg Street. It involves the renewal of water mains and sanitary and storm sewer mains, as well as full street reconstruction, according to the city’s website. It says that local access will be maintained but delays should be expected.

It’s those delays that concern Lowe, who talked during the council session about the effect the slowdowns have on small businesses.

“There’s no doubt (having contractors work on Saturday) would cost the city a little more money because no doubt the contractor would be paid time and a half, or more money,” he said to Baker. “But the job would be done sooner and it wouldn’t effect the people that I feel it does effect.”

Baker said the extra time, or working on Saturdays is something that could be added to a contract. Barring that, he said that a bonus-penalty clause could also be added in which bonuses are given to contractors who finish early and penalties added if they finish late.

Lowe told Brunswick News that there are several similar projects scheduled or ongoing and he was using that particular area on Waterloo Street as an example that could be applied all over. Like some other municipalities, he said adding a sixth day should be considered.

“It’s common sense, if you do an extra day of work, you’re going to get an extra day of work done and (the project) will go faster,” he said. “I said particularly in a business area, this effects business on streets that are all dug up.”

Baker later told Brunswick News that weekend work may very well be feasible. But adding a bonus/penalty clause to construction contracts, in which contractors are penalized for finishing late and given bonuses for finishing early, may make more sense.

“Some contractors do work six days a week and I wouldn’t necessarily take that off the table and it’s not necessarily something we would not consider trying in a (project) that makes sense for that,” he said. “A bonus/penalty system for contractors would be preferable because we can control it – it’s intended to incentivize the contractor to get them in and out quickly.”

Baker said he recognizes the inconvenience businesses and residents face with all the work happening in the city and said they do try and communicate with business owners before starting work.

“If there’s a good time for a watermain shutdown (for the business) we’ll put it in the spec to ask the contractor to do the work on a specific day because (if it’s a restaurant) the restaurant needs to be closed,” he said. “We can also do what’s called ‘liquidated damages’ in our standard spec that if they aren’t done in a certain amount of time, we can charge the contractor liquidated damage fees.”

Baker conceded that there could be some projects where a six-day work week would make sense, and there are often times where Saturday work is required, such as cases with a sense of urgency.

Use it or lose it

The weekly construction report issued by council that documents all the different projects currently happening in the city shows there are nine different areas being rebuilt, upgraded, or where work will start in the coming weeks.

Coun. David Hickey told the Brunswick News the reason they all seem to be happening at the same time is that council got ambitious in asking for funding from the federal government for underground water and sewage infrastructure and were approved for a lot more than they anticipated. All that funding came with a schedule and he said they had to use it or they ran the risk of losing the funding.

“It positions Saint John incredibly well in terms of growth perspective because it means as we redo all these, we add so much more capacity to our system, and are able to build more densely and higher, particularly in the uptown,” he said.

However, Hickey agreed with Lowe that anything that makes the work go faster should be looked at, to mitigate the effect on local businesses, traffic and residents. But whether it’s contractors putting in weekend hours or working at night, that’s up for discussion.

“We see other jurisdictions take on night shift considerations in certain areas. There’d have to be a residential consideration because people have to live in these communities,” he said. “But there also has to be a recognition of the impact that these street reconstructions have on communities, especially in a moment like this where we have so much happening at once.”

Hickey said as far as he knows, it’s not a rule that workers cannot work on weekends or after hours. In a lot of cases contractors may make that decision depending on what is happening on the individual work site.

Working after hours possible

Fredericton is no stranger to construction hassles, with its Princess Margaret Bridge currently undergoing repairs, along with several other road improvement projects. Fredericton’s Deputy Mayor Greg Ericson told Brunswick News that working outside the schedule can be complicated.

“You have to have conversations long before you release tenders because (contractors) need the infrastructure environment that supports their activities to be open, or they have to have the cashflow to mitigate them not being open – if they run out of nails, they have to be able to buy nails,” he said. “In the absence of a (source) open when they need it, they have to have those parts in their inventory, and that’s expensive.”

In Fredericton, the deputy mayor said, residents will sometimes ask why they can’t work on the bridge after hours, but if they did that, he added, materials providers would have to be open, workers may need to look into childcare and a host of other items would need to be in place in order for the work to go faster.

“The reality is, New Brunswick is not set up to do normal outside-hours business operations because we are too small in many ways and we don’t have the support system of activities,” he said. “On a project-to-project basis it could happen, but it’s one of those situations where it’s an easy suggestion but it requires the world to be a different place.”

Locals frustrated

Business owner Anne McShane said she was happy to hear Lowe talking about trying to shorten the construction time. The owner of The Feel Good Store on Germain Street says she has spoken to councillors a few times concerning how construction affects small businesses and hopes they can come to a solution.

“I appreciate this work to bring some of this hundred-year-old infrastructure into the now, and when I’ve contacted the city they are wonderful to deal with,” she said. “But I think that sometimes what gets lost is that they may save money by having these long timelines but that cost will be borne by someone, and that someone here are residents and people who work uptown and people with businesses.”

She said local businesses are not immune to customer complaints.

“Oh, everyone complains,” she said with a laugh. “It can be awkward, but this is par for the course – when there are this many (construction projects) happening all at once it starts to scream a message all on its own and it becomes a deterrent.”

It’s not just in this province. Over the last few years Halifax has seen hundreds of construction projects affect every facet of that city, with the Cogswell Exchange remodification downtown, the Big Lift bridge improvements on the MacDonald Bridge and the expansion of the new residential area of West Bedford. Halifax Regional Municipality Coun. Tim Outhit said there too, it’s up to individual contractors to decide to work after hours and there are generally no objections from city staff when weekend or after-hours work happens.