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by groestl 765 days ago
> it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems.

That's because the company that wins the tender knows they're competing on the lowest price, and nobody really cares for time to completion. So they're keeping the construction site as a fallback for other construction sites, that are more important to them and have a higher price tag.

It's the equivalent to preemptive pricing for VMs.
2 comments
jq-r 765 days ago
Exactly! And it doesn't even have to be a fallback. The same company could have won (or "won" if you know what I mean) many/majority of those tenders and are intentionally spread thin. Because once you win it, you leave a token crew there, and move to win another one, leave token crew again and again. So they're just doing everything all at once very slowly while being paid a lot.

Also this doesn't even have to be a public works type of job. They do this kind of stuff for private works like house construction. 30 people show up and start working, and after couple of days you have 2 guys working for weeks while others are somewhere else.

I was very surprised when I saw repaving of couple of street intersections in Chicago. Those guys did it like they were on a competition. Really fast and really nice. They were done in couple of days. I couldn't believe it. In my part of the world, the same job would take months, and I'm not even kidding.

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groestl 765 days ago
All of that is very true, including the bit about private works.
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hiatus 765 days ago
Are there no deadlines in these contracts or penalties where the company is charged X/day until completion?
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floxy 765 days ago
There are/can be incentives/penalties to complete road construction on time. Although I'm sure it varies with jurisdiction.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/t508010.cfm

https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/2908-highway-t...

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bombcar 765 days ago
Many of the cases that I know of where a performance bonus existed (like $million for every day the estimate is beaten) they finished ahead of schedule and under budget.
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