The City of Saskatoon’s General Manager of Transportation and Construction says this road construction season was one of the most productive in recent history due to the cooperative weather and contractor progress. Terry Schmidt says all of the road, water main and sidewalk work was completed on time and on budget, and in some cases it was done early. In fact, the work on 8th Street was done 20 days ahead of schedule, with the contractor working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There were some issues with procuring pipe for water main replacements and finding enough steel and lumber, which meant rising prices, but Schmidt says the projects remained on budget overall. He adds that prices are beginning to stabilize now.

In this past construction season, 207 lane kilometres of road and 28 kilometres of sidewalk have been rehabilitated and 22 kilometres of water mains have been replaced. This year’s total construction budget was about $65.5-million, similar to last year.

Schmidt says COVID-19 didn’t affect the construction season because it was the second season of working through it, and all the protocols were already in place.

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