By meadowlakeNOW

2017 a busy year for M.L. engineering department

Jan 26, 2018 | 1:00 PM

City engineering crews had a busy and productive year in 2017, both on and under Meadow Lake streets, according to recent report presented to council this week.

For capital projects, full depth rehabilitation was done to a number of streets, as well as removal and replacement of pavement in some areas. Valves were replaced, and an extensive sewer replacement took place on Cochin Avenue.

These annual reports are fairly new practice, as the first time something like this was compiled was in 2016. City Manager Diana Burton said a great deal of work was done by the department.

“The staff started taking pictures of projects as they were going on, and I think it’s really good for staff to see, but also for council and the public to see,” she said. “Council is really impressed with the report because their comment is they forget all that’s done, so it’s really cool to see it all with pictures and descriptions of what was accomplished.”

She said the projects were completed within the year they were budgeted for, which is was the city’s main goal. However, some ended up being more extensive than had originally planned.

Wasted fish

Fish abandoned at Deschambault Lake

18m ago

Leadership Needed to Stop Federal Overreach

1h ago

Sharing memories

North Stars reflect on one-year anniversary of 2023 championship

16h ago

“With Cochin Avenue, we ended up doing the sewer main as well as some of the service connections along that street,” Burton said. “That was something that wasn’t planned, but we did some camera work in the line we realized it needed to be replaced before we put pavement over it so they were not ripping up the fresh pavement.”

Another focus in 2017 was to do some asset management, which came in the form of road condition survey and assessment, map work, pipe inspection and evaluation, which has been completed by the city’s engineer, Rocky Chowdhury and staff.

“He came up with the parameters for it and did a condition assessment for all our roads,” Burton said. “He completed that before the snow fell, he also got a good portion of the sidewalk condition assessment done. All of that helps us to plug it into our asset management system and help us figure out what we need to replace and when. It’s really helpful in the budgeting process and making sure we’re replenishing the assets we have in a timely manner.”

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca  

On Twitter @ReporterKath