We’ve all heard the old joke, right? Q: What are Minnesota’s two seasons? A: Winter and Road Construction season.
It’s funny (I guess) because there is an element of truth to it. The number of days that one can count on for road construction work in this state are limited by the severity of our seasons. You can’t deconstruct and reconstruct a road in this state from November through April. It’s too risky. It’s almost certainly too cold, too icy, or too snowy for people to work outside or for construction materials to function properly. So we cope with the situation we have here: We make plans in the winter and we excute plans in the non-winter.
Civil engineers, both those in public practice with cities, counties, or the state, and those in private practice in consulting firms, are a busy lot in the winter. Usually their technicians and survey teams have accumulated all the information they need to design a road. The winter time serves as the time to put design on paper or into the computer-aided design (CAD) system that will eventually spit out the plan sheets.
Late winter is for bidding the projects. This is where engineering transitions into construction. It’s where theory collides with practice. Engineers try to design projects that cannot fail to serve the need they were asked merely to meet. Contractors try to fulfill the need the project is trying to meet in a minimal fashion, while always staying within the limits of their contract, so they can preserve as much of the contract fee as possible. It’s not a game, but it’s close.
When the weather finally breaks for good in the spring, it’s time to do the projects. This summer you will see projects all over town. We are doing a full summer’s worth of road maintenance projects on City streets. We are going to see major projects (again) on east-bound 494 again this summer between Eden Prairie and Bloomington. Look for maps of our City street projects in the Eden Prairie News and Eden Prairie Sun Current newspaper.
Contractors are getting more sophisticated every year about working their projects. You see more night construction these days than ever before, for example. But the one thing that contractors have always needed from the driving public is the same thing they’ll need this summer – you attention. Please be careful while driving in construction zones. It’s a long summer and if you drive in Eden Prairie much, you’ll drive in construction a fair amount this summer.
Please be safe around construction zones.
