Can someone explain this to me

[FROSTY]

The local council decided in their wisdom to replace the water mains running out front of our yard. 3 weeks of mud and slush and general messyness ensued.
Sales of course are affected by this
Hey look thats life I understand and not whinging about that.
BUT this morning theres another bunch of diggers out front.
The council are once again digging up. WHY? to run a new sewer line through.
Now where in gods name is the sense in that? Dig a brand new trench and disrupt traffic for another 3 weeks.
Yes folks THIS is where ya rates money is going.
No doubt we'll get a leaflet soon to say the telco's or underground power supply guys need to dig up again. ARGGG

[mashman]

tis the same the world over... they were always digging up a stretch of road by us, UK, a VERY busy stretch of road, first water, then telecommunications, then waste pipes etc... gotta spend the department budget somehow, else it be clawed back... At least that's my understanding :)

[pzkpfw]

Every now and then you hear of a software project (e.g. web site ...) that enables the service suppliers to get together and plan this kind of thing together - not that hard, you'd think. Three kids with a Commodore 64 and a 300 BAUD modem ought to sort that out.

An old lady with a notebook (a real paper one) and a telephone would do it.

Astounding this stuff still goes on, really.


I've heard that in Germany some cities don't seal their inner city roads, they just have concrete slabs over a permanent ditch. New pipe to put in? Just lift the slabs, lay the pipe and put the slabs back in place.

[Genie]

Sorry dude, you're not special. All councils, all over the world do this.

[Banditbandit]

Yeah mate ... if they were intelligent they wouldn't be council workers ...

[Genie]

It's not the workers, they just do as they are told.

It's the ones in the offices', sitting on their butts and not communicating with other departments causing the shit. Too many Chief's and not enough Inidans????

[Banditbandit]

It's not the workers, they just do as they are told.

It's the ones in the offices', sitting on their butts and not communicating with other departments causing the shit. Too many Chief's and not enough Inidans????

Same thing .. intelligent people don't work for councils ..

[Deano]

Same thing .. intelligent people don't work for councils ..

Intelligent people don't make sweeping generalisations over the internet.

[Banditbandit]

Intelligent people don't make sweeping generalisations over the internet.

You're right .. but trolling is amusing

[Str8 Jacket]

You're right .. but trolling is amusing

Yes, of course it is if you're 5!

[Juzz976]

It's because your council hired consultants/engineers to plan the works.

They then split the contract up into sections for sub tendering and copy and paste a whole lot of irrelevant crap into their specification with some minor conflicting "Ideas and concepts" of what work is to be carried out.
They'll also provide an inaccurate glossary of terms and drawings of things that don't work.

They'll want the contractors to drop everything they're doing and build them some $2,000 product that took them $20,000 to not design properly. Most importantly they'll get payed more than you, they fuck everything up, try to make you look like you don't know what you doing.

They pay you to do the work from their drawings but you'll need to design everything yourself which you will not get payed for.

The reason your road will get dug up time and time again is the fact that legislation requires works to be planned by someone who learnt everything they know off someone who spent their whole life in a classroom or at least tryed to do real world work and was unable to produce the goods.

There is an exception, I have met 1 modest engineer and it is a delight to do work him.

[Mully]

IIRC, many years ago - when I used to work in the CBD (as opposed to now, when I again work in the CBD), Customs Street was dug up three times in the space of a year for various things. Water, Telecom and summit else.

I vaguely recall hearing the Auckland City Council at the time make promises about making all these guys talk to each other and plan so they only had to dig up the road once. Dunno if anything happened with that, but I doubt it.

[onearmedbandit]

The reason regarding budgets holds some truth.

[Squiggles]

Just make sure they do a good job on the reseal (report it if its not up to par), far too many just snake it up or the filler falls apart.

[ducatilover]

Intelligent people don't make sweeping generalisations over the internet.

Bit of a hypocritical generalization isn't that? :wings:

[Ronin]

The local council decided in their wisdom to replace the water mains running out front of our yard. 3 weeks of mud and slush and general messyness ensued.
Sales of course are affected by this
Hey look thats life I understand and not whinging about that.
BUT this morning theres another bunch of diggers out front.
The council are once again digging up. WHY? to run a new sewer line through.
Now where in gods name is the sense in that? Dig a brand new trench and disrupt traffic for another 3 weeks.
Yes folks THIS is where ya rates money is going.
No doubt we'll get a leaflet soon to say the telco's or underground power supply guys need to dig up again. ARGGG

Simple. Skiddy has a job at the council.

[Banditbandit]

yes, of course it is if you're 5!

dilligaf ...

[Str8 Jacket]

dilligaf ...

Yes <youcaresooomuch>

[rainman]

Three kids with a Commodore 64 and a 300 BAUD modem ought to sort that out.

I think the problem is political, not technical.


The reason regarding budgets holds some truth.

Never attribute to malice that which can be satisfactorily explained by incompetence.

To be fair, government (local or central) is really difficult and therefore harder to organise than many other pursuits. Much more tricky than just making and shipping stuff. And because everyone whinges about the waste of their taxes and rates, it's not terribly well rewarded, so doesn't attract the very bestest (although I have worked with some smart and capable buggers in various levels of government) so it's a vicious cycle, innit?

Just to make things more exiting, rumour has it that Rodney's SuperScrewup is generally dropping wages and conditions for those lucky enough to retain their jobs post-1 Nov, so morale is taking a beating, and service/motivation is likely to slip rather than improve. Of course when it has almost fallen to bits the grown ups will have to step back in and fix it all up again. By which time Rodders will have stolen off with the family silver. No surprises there.

[tigertim20]

The local council decided in their wisdom to replace the water mains running out front of our yard. 3 weeks of mud and slush and general messyness ensued.
Sales of course are affected by this
Hey look thats life I understand and not whinging about that.
BUT this morning theres another bunch of diggers out front.
The council are once again digging up. WHY? to run a new sewer line through.
Now where in gods name is the sense in that? Dig a brand new trench and disrupt traffic for another 3 weeks.
Yes folks THIS is where ya rates money is going.
No doubt we'll get a leaflet soon to say the telco's or underground power supply guys need to dig up again. ARGGG

im pretty sure you can do something about the loss of income through your local council

[pzkpfw]

I think the problem is political, not technical.

Yeah, pretty much my point.

[onearmedbandit]

Never attribute to malice that which can be satisfactorily explained by incompetence.



Ha, no malice whatsoever. It never pays to assume. My brother is high up in one of the largest contractors in NZ, he's told me first hand that councils will hurriedly put out work towards end of year budgets, and overspend as well.

[FROSTY]

Just an update and a request for advice. Currently EVERY fenceline ion the yard has either a ruddy great hole in the ground by it, a great pile of dirt by it or both. Somebody mentioned loss of income. Given it has without question affected the companys sales
(Go figure when people coundn't even park outside the yard let alone come in)

[pete376403]

Ha, no malice whatsoever. It never pays to assume. My brother is high up in one of the largest contractors in NZ, he's told me first hand that councils will hurriedly put out work towards end of year budgets, and overspend as well.

this could explain why Upper Hutt City Council have a contractor ripping up the footpaths in my street and relaying them, even though they (the footpaths) are in perfectly acceptable condition (there's the odd crack and bit of uneveness, but not to justify relaying about a kilometer of footpath)

[p.dath]

I think a good idea to solve this kind of issue is to simply have the council declare a maintenance window - a bit like how your bike gets a maintenance window every 6,000km or your car every 10,000km.

For each area, say they will only give a permit to dig up the street once every six months for 4 weeks. Ideally, the maintenance window should be immediately prior to road maintenance when re-sealing is done.

If there is a schedule of when works can be done, then infrastructure providers could better plan.