COLORADO SPRINGS — This winter season, several road and highway construction projects in El Paso County are either ahead, or right on schedule. The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and El Paso County officials said that the winter season has been fairly dry so far.
Randy Johnson is a Project Engineer with CDOT. He said that if it is snowing, all construction operations will stop. With winter weather in the forecast for Thursday and Friday nights, Johnson said construction projects will pause as active weather moves in.
“We prepare for winter storms,” Johnson said. “Our number one goal is we need to get public safety through our project.”
Josh Palmer is an Engineer with El Paso County. He said completion dates for these projects are heavily dependent on the weather.
“Everything we do in construction has some sort of weather component to it,” Palmer said.
Palmer said that typically, paving is done between April and October, and in the winter months, they focus on drainage.
“It is a good time to do anything with water, drainage, creak work, because there is less water following through it,” Palmer said.
He said the biggest battle in the winter is snow because it slows construction down.
“We don't want to get in the way of the highway crew from clearing the roads and making it safe to get around,” Palmer said.
But he said drier weather so far this winter has helped speed along their projects.
“A new positive overall on our projects and allowing us to take advantage of the weather and being productive as possible,” Palmer said.
Johnson agrees. He said that all of their south Colorado Springs projects are ahead of schedule.
“If we have the nicer weather, it allows us to catch up, if we are behind a little bit or if we are on schedule, it allows us to progress and possibly finish earlier,” Johnson said.
He said they are ahead of schedule for many of their projects on the southside of Colorado Springs.
“A lot of that is attributed to the weather being good,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the key to staying on track is taking advantage of the nice weather and planning around the storms.
“Sometimes it will pass as though, if it does pass us, it will allow us to continue working and get ahead of schedule or catch up or if it does come in, we have a plan for it and appropriately get off the road.”
Both engineers said that luckily this winter, they have not had many storms so they have been able to get a lot done.
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