Our process for repaving roads in Michigan seems archaic, has not been updated to the efficiency standards found in the rest of the economy. Our Department of Transportation will have a small team of say 10 guys slowly repaving an 8 mile stretch of road, bit by bit, for 4 months. Oblivious to the fact that they have closed 2 lanes of a major expressway for 4 months. Why not have a team of 20 guys repave the road in 2 months, or a team of 40 guys repaving the road in 1 month? Same number of manhours. Have the first group of 10 guys responsible for repaving just the first 2 miles; then another team of 10 guys simultaneously repaving miles 3 and 4; etc.
A related idea would be to have people working two shifts, a day shift and a night shift on each construction project, of course having the road shut down for half the time (there would likely be a shift premium at night for this alternative).
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For local projects most likely money is the determining factor. And people cost lots of money. If you add more people to the crew you incur the overhead costs of insurance and other bennies, even if you hire them for just the length of the project. Also figure in the behind the scenes people like mechanics, engineers, supervisors, etc. Add in the equipment costs for doubling the crew size and the initial amount of cash needed goes up pretty fast.
Working night and day with the same equipment and different crews needs to take into account time needed for equipment maintenance.
So local units of government have a staff they use to do a job as best as they can within the constraints of their budget.
One solution is to reduce the size of the full-time crew and hire part-time summer help. Many places do this. However, employee turnover means you have a less experienced crew a lot of the time.
Another solution is to change from a "road building" crew which requires a lot of people and equipment, to a "road maintenance" crew which requires significantly less people and equipment. With the money saved the locality hires a contractor to build the roads. This places the big crew on someone elses permanent payroll so you only pay indirectly for the duration of the project. The contractor takes the responsibility for ensuring a job well done. The contracts are bid and a cost is set. The locality can budget for this without factoring in rising costs. If incentives are used for quick job completion the contractor will throw as many people as he can free up to complete the job in a timely manner.
I don't follow your comment that it would be more expensive to staff things differently. Instead of 6,000 manhours spread over 6 months (1,000 manhours per month), my suggestion was 2,000 manhours per month for 3 months -- still the same number of total manhours. As you pointed out, you would have to rent twice as many steamrollers and contract twice as many supervisors, but only for 3 months rather than 6 months, so again the cost is the same.
If your concern is where to get the bodies from, we often have 2 major east-west arteries simultaneously shut down for construction in Michigan (folks in Lansing these days don't have much concern for the working guy). So my suggestion is that instead of having 10 guys working on one east-west artery and 10 working on the other east-west artery simultaneously, you have all 20 working on just one. Essentially the same number of guys working, just working sequentially on repairing roads rather than working in parallel. Again, working sequentially shouldn't cost any more than working in parallel.
Just seems like one of those things that no one ever thought of, not a good idea that is unaffordable.
OK. Here's a really simplified way of looking at it.
Let's say a road project will take 6 months with ten people working on it. If a municipality can afford ten people to cover it's road work it's going to hire ten people. The funding is there to pay those people for a full year. When the road project is done there is other work those people will do for the other 1/2 of the year.
If they can afford to hire ten people but hire twenty to complete a job in half the time the job is done in three months but there is only enough money left to fund the 10 people needed for other stuff for 1/2 year, leaving 3 months with no funding. Therefore, no workers for 3 months.
Taxes could be raised, I suppose. . .
using your number of 10 workers (i.e., if a municipality can only afford to hire 10 workers), what they often do is split them into two groups of 5, and have two different roads under construction for 12 months (call this Alt A). my proposal would be the approach you mentioned of having all 10 work on one project for 6 months, and then the second project for 6 months (call this Alt B).
Unfortunately in Michigan, our Governor prefers Alt B, which has 2 major roads shut down for 12 months. Ask the average Joe who has a job and commutes to work, and he would prefer Alt A. The cost of Alt A and Alt B is the same, but if you have any compassion for the working Joe, Alt B would be the best choice.
In practice, it is more complex (e.g., road workers are often not government employees, allowing for even greater flexibility to vary staffing levels), but your simple example helps illustrate the point.