Richard Froese
South Peace News
Concerns of maintaining gravel roads in Big Lakes County was the main focus as council discussed an external report on the level of service for roads.
At its regular meeting Aug. 28, council passed a motion to accept the report dated June 2 from RI Environmental and Engineering.
Reeve Tyler Airth said gravelling roads seems to be a balancing act.
“The good roads, we are putting on enough gravel, on the bad roads, we’re not putting enough gravel on,” Airth said.
“A lot of our roads are over-gravelled.”
South Sunset House – Gilwood Councillor Ann Stewart suggested some roads be restructured.
“Maybe we need to rebuild some of our (gravel) roads,” she said.
North Gilwood – Triangle Councillor Jim Zabolotniuk added the grader operators can provide valuable advice on maintaining gravel roads.
“We have to start relying on our grader operators to know what needs to be done,” he said.
RI senior engineer Ian Cosh suggested council consult the community on gravelling practices.
“Public engagement could be undertaken to gauge the interest of the public in changing the level of service in policies for maintenance of gravelling main haul routes, road inspection, road maintenance, road standards and designations and truck hiring,” Cosh said.
Gravel consumption is trending downward, he added.
“The objective is to use what gravel is required to maintain the roadway in the desired condition.” Cosh said.
The report, written by Cosh, will be further reviewed by Ben Letemplier, director of operations, who will present a report and recommendations to council at an upcoming meeting.
Letemplier started with Big Lakes in August as its third director of operations since October 2022.
“The current service delivery model is working well and is the result of many decades of incremental refinement and formal and informal benchmarking,” Cosh wrote in the report’s conclusion.
“Continuous improvement through an asset management system is ongoing and expected to continue to achieve efficient and effective results required.”
A possible alternative to the current model could be insourcing the gravel haul.
“A program that is steady and predictable such as this one is a good candidate for internal delivery,” Cosh says.
Another possible alternative is to adjust the proportion of outsourced gravel truck versus internal trucks.
Both of those options would include increases to the existing county fleet, staff and related programs, he said.
“An increased amount of internal trucking could operate alongside contracted forces,” Cosh said.
If council has a strategic goal to develop internal capacity for road gravelling, it is expected that, once established and refined, the core business could be provided at lower costs compared to providing the service externally as the county currently does.
It is anticipated to have wide-reaching impact within Big Lakes based on the extent to which the service is internalized.
“The flexibility and control changes would be significant and the cost efficiency and day-to-day operation of other county programs will be impacted,” Koch said.
The economy of the current scale of the maintenance shop, staff and programs that share resources with those business units would be impacted.