Is this an acceptable repair job? (pavement outside home)

Section62

Rosa_Damascena said:

My local council is now really pushing back on contractors that have left our roads a mess.

I wish more would take that approach, and particularly deal with the contractors who leave traffic management in place for days/weeks around almost finished work, so they can do the final reinstatement on multiple jobs in one go at a time convenient to them, not for the convenience of the road users.

I'd possibly go further and bring back the days where the highway authority was responsible for the final reinstatement and could better control the quality of the repair.  At the end of the day the public usually pick up the cost of sorting out poorly completed utility reinstatements, so there's potentially scope for cost savings if councils took the work back.

/Rant

Money_Grabber13579

Off topic slightly but I really wish utility companies would plan their work better because there are numerous roads around me that have recently been resurfaced and then the utilities come along a dig a huge trench up it. It wouldn’t be so bad if they reinstated it properly but one that has just been dug up in the last month or so has been reinstated so badly that it gives a serious vibration in the car when driving over it (for about half a mile). No idea how they’ve managed to do that.

Section62

Money_Grabber13579 said:

Off topic slightly but I really wish utility companies would plan their work better because there are numerous roads around me that have recently been resurfaced and then the utilities come along a dig a huge trench up it. It wouldn’t be so bad if they reinstated it properly but one that has just been dug up in the last month or so has been reinstated so badly that it gives a serious vibration in the car when driving over it (for about half a mile). No idea how they’ve managed to do that.

Don't blame the utilities, blame the local streetworks/highway authority.

Legislation allows them to serve notice on the utilities that resurfacing is taking place and for 12 months after that the utilities will only be allowed to carry out excavation if it is an emergency.

If the utilitie companies near you are carrying out planned work soon after resurfacing has been done then the streetworks authority is failing to perform its coordination duty properly.  Find out who the "Traffic Manager" is at the local council and send them some examples of where the digging up has happened and ask them to explain why that was allowed to happen.

Eldi_Dos

My pet gripe about resurfacing works is the staff who improvise in getting various frames and covers and tobys level, using shims of pieces of tile,slate or even wedges of wood before applying whatever bond is used. These methods might achieve a level surface but we have all seen failures caused by this ,usually just outside the guarantee period.
Give them their due the staff responsible for trunk routes are more up on this problem than other bodies responsible for roads.

Section62

Eldi_Dos said:

Give them their due the staff responsible for trunk routes are more up on this problem than other bodies responsible for roads.

Traffic loading on trunk routes usually shows up defective workmanship much quicker than on quieter roads, and having rush hour road/lane closures on a trunk route if a cover fails is often headline grabbing whereas a couple of signs and half a dozen cones around a manhole on Acacia Avenue might not even make it onto the Acacia Avenue FB/Whatsapp group.

Hence the busier the route, the more attention is paid to getting it right first time by the employees/officers responsible for oversight.

Eldi_Dos

Yeah agree completely but does not excuse LA  staff who are to naive to check or unwilling to get their hands dirty to look.