A consultant's review of best practices paints a frosty picture of the city's snow and ice control operations.
Tonight, city council will meet as committee of the whole to discuss a report commissioned by staff on snow clearing that claims "it is very challenging and difficult for [city of Prince George] to make good decisions on snow and ice operations."
Between May and July, the Maryland-based Mercury Associates conducted a review of the city's fleet, fleet replacement practices and snow and ice control.
The report was a response to a February request from council to have a dedicated meeting with more information about the challenges the public works (formerly operations) department faced clearing streets this past winter after an internal analysis returned a request for nearly $6 million in new equipment.
"We can't look at spending our way of this mess," Coun. Brian Skakun said at the Feb. 24 meeting. "We have to manage our way out as well."
That management has to be more proactive and better planned, the review recommended, pointing out areas of improvement such as shift scheduling, pre-winter planning and the maintaining equipment.
Some of the suggestions made by Mercury overlapped with the issues uncovered during the initial internal review, such as splitting focus for top-priority areas.
After a snowfall, downtown streets and main arterial roads are given first priority, with remaining bus routes and collectors roads coming next and residential roads last.
The consultant report notes that downtown streets are currently given exclusive priority on the first night, leaving arterial roads until those are clear, but that both sets should be tackled at the same time.
Mercury recommends implementing a timeframe for completing snow clearing (for a 10- to 15-centimetre snowfall) that would see first- and second-priority streets cleared within 48 hours and residential roads cleared four days after the second-priority streets are finished.
"This is a new concept for the city of Prince George but has been utilized by a number of municipalities across Canada," said a report to council from associate public works director Gina Layte Liston.
The consultants also recommended that staff pull 12-hour shifts when all hands on deck are needed, as opposed to the current temporary 10-hour shifts.
When it comes to staffing, the city has 81 per cent winter shift coverage, according to the review, with 32.5 hours out of a 168-hour week where there are no streets employees working - between Friday night and Saturday morning and a 24-hour stretch between Saturday and Sunday nights.
When there is coverage, the way the work is tracked is "ineffective and lacking in necessary detailed information," the consultants found, with crew activities summarized in a one-page report that doesn't include detailed locations, completed routes marked on an erasable board and work assignments and additional instructions provided verbally.
"[City of Prince George's] residential snow clearing operation lacks detailed planning," said the report, which recommends developing route maps for sanding and plowing that have to be signed off on by a foreman.
Echoing the initial staff review, the consultant also identified a need for GPS technology to track equipment. The city will be going to tender within the next few months for GPS equipment, according to Layte Liston's report.
Paltry preparation
But creating those routes could be problematic without the proper information, which the Mercury report suggests is not available to those making the decisions since there is no access to road weather information system technology or a subscription weather forecast. Instead, supervisors, foremen and the dispatcher use weather websites and the city's waste water treatment centre for snow accumulations, said the report.
"Reliance on public weather information means [city of Prince George] is very ineffective in making proactive and timely decisions on snow and ice control operations," said the report, which also recognized that the varied geography within the city limits make accurate forecasting difficult.
The city also isn't using its own equipment in the form of a weather station on Vellencher Road, which apparently has defunct pavement temperature sensors.
"Getting this facility back in operation would improve the availability of on-site weather information," said the report. "The current process of applying ice control materials in [the city of Prince George] is inconsistent, ineffective and difficult to manage since the spreader controller system has not been calibrated for two years."
Faulty fleet
The city has enough snow and ice control equipment, but it is in poor shape, according to Mercury. Given 17 pieces of equipment to inspect, the consultants found that all but one were "either completely worn out and need to be replaced or significantly worn out and need to be refurbished."
The monetary ask in February for $5.8 million would have covered the capital costs of replacing aging graders, sanding trucks, sidewalk plows, front-end loaders and a snow blower.
Mercury highlighted issues brought on by having vehicles stored outside, used for purposes other than their original intent (ie. graders used for ice cutting), insufficient operator and preventative maintenance and general repairs being put off.
""Fleets that chronically defer maintenance and repairs to save a dime now will almost always have to spend dollars later on," the report said.
Contractor conundrum
As public works director Bill Gaal highlighted back in February, the city faced a shortage of available contractor equipment.
"The shortage of contractor graders is the bottleneck that significantly restricted [the city's] capacity to perform snow clearing last winter," the consultant report agreed.
The consultants interviewed private contractors as part of their review and though some problems are outside of the city's control - such as competition from mining and logging industries and fewer qualified operators - other issues raised had to do with the municipality's bidding system.
Calling it "unsustainable" the city's system doesn't attract operators with newer equipment because they call those who submit the lowest bid first and no longer offer to put contractors on retainer as they did prior to 2008.
If council wanted to pursue Mercury's recommendation of returning to a retainer system, it would involve further work by staff to determine what the potential costs would be, said Layte Liston's report.
