County of Grande Prairie council approves contract for road overlay program

Apr 29, 2022 | 4:34 PM

The County of Grande Prairie has hired Knelson Sand & Gravel Ltd. to do this year’s road overlay program.

A contract worth just over $1.4 million was approved at Monday’s council meeting.

Reeve Leanne Beaupre says the county lumps a bunch of projects together in this program to get the best bid price.

“That’s what we did this time as well. I think there are five, maybe six actual individual projects that would see an overlay project happen.”

“By economy of scale, of course, that gives us a better unit price if someone gets to do more than one project.”

She adds the size of this year’s program is about the same as in previous years.

“We have a Transportation Master Plan that really looks (at) and identifies the life cycle of a lot of these roads, and we go out and assess them when they get close to that age, whether they need to be either bumped up a year or we can push them back a year.”

Beaupre adds they do also get “concerns and complaints from ratepayers.”

“A lot of that will be education and the outreach that we do with our ratepayers to let them know where that road is in that program.”

“It may be a road that is up for that overlay program the next year or for a rebuild depending on where the road is located and how old the road is.”

Overlay usually includes a new layer of pavement but can include some spot repairs as well.

by Curtis Galbraith