Friday, June 26, 2015
Springer Road Project May Take Additional Ten Days To Complete
Lawrenceburg officials said Thursday that, due to inclement weather, work underway along Springer Road may take an additional ten days to complete.
Public Works Department Director Jerry Smith explained to members of the Lawrenceburg Board of Mayor and Council that rain has caused a few delays in the project, which includes completely reconstructing the roadway from First Street to Weakley Creek Road.
“Everything’s on scheduled,” Smith said. “Weather has caused a few delays but we can’t do anything about the weather…We’re closing in on the thirty days we told everybody Springer Road would be closed…we’re going to need about ten more days from what we originally told the citizens… Everything’s on schedule. Everything’s going good. We’re shooting for the week after the Fourth of July for the top coat to be on.”
Project Engineer Bill Griggs gave a progress report, telling council members, “Looks like we’re going to be a few days late, but it should not interfere with the World Series opening. We’re running a few days late because when it rains they can’t work, and we don’t want them to work. A lot of times it’ll take another day or two after it quits raining to dry out. We don’t want to force them to go out there and work in bad weather and end up with a bad spot. All in all it’s coming along very well, I think.”
Griggs said that, thus far, the project has been fairly typical. “We’ve had one change order so far. When we got to the north side of Springer, right before it went into Weakley Creek, the last 205 feet did not have curb and gutter. It had curb, but not curb and gutter. I checked through city administration and they authorized us to tell Roger’s Group to go ahead and make that curb and gutter so it’ll match all the way through. That’s going to be around $5,000 or $6,000.
“We’re finding a lot of soft spots. There’s a big soft area right south of Weakley Creek. I warned you that if we find a soft spot we’re going to overdo it and put it in there right. So we over-excavated that. We’ve got a budget for that. I don’t know yet if we’re going to be over or under that line item budget.”
Griggs explained, “The procedure we go through is when we excavate down, we’ve got a testing laboratory coming in, he’ll test the nuclear density of the soil and he’ll test a few other things. But those are just indicator tests. Those aren’t actual proof of anything. To prove it we do what you call ‘proof rolling’. We take a dump truck loaded with stone and drive up and down that road. If it stays like this table, then that’s proof that that’s a good solid base. If it goes down into it or pumps a little bit, it’s too soft. Then we dig it out, re-compact it, and do it again. We’ve found several spots like that. We go down at least 18 inches and sometimes more - whatever it takes to get down to the solid stuff. They come in and lay the stone, do the same thing there – density test, compact it with a compactor, then roll it with the dump truck loaded down. Our inspector witnesses that. They lay one layer of asphalt and we get ready for the second layer of asphalt.
“There’ve been a few places on the curb and gutter that, when we got to it, it looked really bad. City crews have been out there replacing curb and gutter. (Lawrenceburg Utility Systems) crews have been staying right there with the contractor and every time there’s a problem with utilities they’re right on it.” He noted, “It’s been a great team effort.”
“Once the final paving begins,” Griggs said, “The plan now is to start at one end and go all the way through with one layer. That’ll give us the smoothest ride possible.”
Mayor Keith Durham urged safety for workers in the heat. “There’s no ball field or ditch or roadway worth having a heat stroke or dying over,” he said, “so make sure your guys stay cool and watered, especially in this hot weather.”
