Why does pipe work take so long?

In November, the Nelson City Council put out a press release proclaiming that a $3.2 million stormwater upgrade on St Vincent St has been completed, “on time and within budget”.

It would have been welcome news for those who use the shops in the area, after the road had been closed since April, forcing people to detour around a sea of road cones.

The project started just a month after a $10m upgrade to stormwater in Rutherford St concluded – the second stage of a project that started in 2016.

So, why do these projects take so long? And why can’t the roads stay open when it's happening?

Nelson City Council group infrastructure Manager Alec Louverdis said much of the disruption came down to health and safety, and the sheer scale of the work that was being undertaken.

Take Rutherford St – those pipes were 1.8 metres in diameter. That’s enough for an adult to stand in.

“They are very, very big pipes,” Louverdis said.

For a job of that scale, keeping roads open would almost double the amount of time the project took to complete, and would greatly increase costs, he said.

“Six-and-a-half meters is unbelievably deep, just for a trench. So you can either decide that, to make it safer for everybody, you can close that portion of the road and do the work that you need to do, or keep it open, and you've got to have special extra manpower. You’ve got to have fences. You've got to have stop-go. You've got to have all the irritation that goes with that, whereas redirecting the traffic, even though it's through a different route, you have that free flow of traffic.”

Keeping the road open at St Vincent St would have added about five months to the project, he said.

“I guarantee you that that would have been even more disruptive ... it would have been an absolute nightmare.

“So sometimes, especially in cases where we are dictated to by where our infrastructure is.”,