Yesterday, The Seattle Times published a front page story about road and sidewalk do-over work in Seattle. Photos, like the one to the left from Times photographer Greg Gilbert, showed sloppy work.
Some perspective is needed here.
Last week, I received a packet of materials from SDOT documenting specific details about the seven do-over projects since 2007 (one of the seven will be completed this year). The cost of these seven re-do projects? $194,925 in documented re-do costs. This figure increases to $371,925 if one project's total costs ($177,000) are attributed to the re-do, but specific tracking for this Ravenna Avenue project did not include a breakout of the re-do costs.
So, depending on how you calculate the re-do costs for 2007 and 2008 combined, the City spent between $194,000 and $372,000.
For an understanding on whether these do-overs indicate a problem, the costs needs to be compared with the annual budget for street/sidewalk repairs. That budget was $21.4 million in 2007 and $24.5 million in 2008. (For 2009, the street/sidewalk repair budget is set at $26.5 million.) For 2007 and 2008 combined, the City spent between one-half of one percent and one percent of its street/sidewalk repair budget on do-over work.
The national average for do-over or rework for all types of construction projects averages five percent, according to a study published in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management in March 2009.
Perhaps Sunday's newspaper headline should have read "Seattle Street Repairs Beat National Average for Do-Over Work" instead of "Bungled Projects Symptom of Seattle Street Department Woes."