Construction season is bustling as nicer weather persists

GREENFIELD — Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman told the Adair County Free Press Thursday that with frost coming out of the ground and warmer daytime temperatures persisting, general contractors who bid on road, bridge and culvert projects are hitting the ground running in the busiest time of their year to get those projects completed.

Kauffman expects the county to have three deck pours this month on bridges being built. A bridge at Louck’s Grove, just south of 150th Street on Quebec Avenue, will have its deck poured in the next two weeks. A bride along 110th Street in Jefferson Township south of Menlo was due to have its deck poured late last week. A third bridge will have a deck poured in the next week or two is along 250th Street west of Fontanelle.

“You’ve gotta have a warm temperature to pour a deck. You can only protect it so much, so it has to be exposed to the elements,” Kauffman said. “You’ve gotta have these warmer temperatures, like 40 degrees and rising, to pour a bridge deck.”

Another project currently underway is a box culvert being installed along 170th Street in Prussia Township. Starting soon will be a box culvert installation on Delta Avenue just south of 250th Street west of Fontanelle, and Kauffman expects that project to start in the next month or two.

Farther down the line, the county has a bridge project on tap along 330th Street in Richland Township, which will have a bid letting this month. There is a box culvert to be put in on Brown Avenue in Section 20 of Jackson Township that will have a July bid letting and two that need installed in Section 10 of Orient Township along Pinewood Avenue that will have bid letting in August. There is also a box culvert that will need to be installed sometime soon in Section 33 of Eureka Township on Clay Avenue.

A joint project is on tap to happen sometime this construction season along 310th Street at the Adair-Cass County line. The two counties will work together to widen and grade a small portion of the road that wasn’t done last year. Next year, that road is due to be paved from Bridgewater Road to the county line.

A rock contract was also recently entered, costing $465,000, that will grade and surface 60 miles of farm to market roads in the county.

“It’s the time of year when all the contractors get rolling because the conditions are right to start working,” Kauffman said. “We’ve gotten very good bid prices on everything. I think there was only one out of all of those projects we’ve done that was over our estimate. A couple of these projects we had hoped to get done sooner, but there are a lot of things we can’t control, no matter how long we think it should take. All in all, we’re in pretty good shape.”