N.S. paving decision riles road builders

The Nova Scotia government's decision to get back into the paving business after 18 years away came as a shock, an industry group says.

Ron Dunn, president of the Nova Scotia Road Builders Association, said Wednesday that members weren't told the government was getting back into the business.

"We were basically made aware through tenders issues in newspapers for equipment required to do chip sealing," Dunn said from his offices at S.W. Weeks Construction Ltd. in New Glasgow.

Transportation Minister Bill Estabrooks announced Tuesday that the province believes it could save up to $4.7 million by doing some of the road paving and chip-sealing projects on its own.

"There's certain areas of this province where there's a history that we don't consider the fact that we've been getting fair value for the tenders that have been called," Estabrooks told reporters on Tuesday.

Dunn agreed prices are higher on some jobs, but said that is largely due to the remote locations the work must be done.

"Victoria County or northern Inverness up there, there's limited source of aggregates so a lot of the times that cost is based in getting materials to the job," Dunn said, referring to rural areas in western Cape Breton.

Transportation Department officials said the lack of competition had resulted in chip-sealing prices a process that uses rock chips and liquid asphalt to repave roads that were much higher in Nova Scotia compared with New Brunswick.

The department provided figures from 2008-09 showing that the tendered cost in Nova Scotia to resurface a kilometre of paved road was $32,500. In New Brunswick the tendered cost was $16,600, while work done by provincial crews came in at $15,100.

Wages comparable

Dunn said that while wages are comparable between government workers and those in the private industry, benefits paid to government workers would be higher. He believes it would be difficult for the government to save as much money as they are planning.

"Our belief at this stage without seeing the full business plan is there's no possible way that they can save the money that they are saying," Dunn said.

"It could potentially put some companies out of business. If not it will inevitably result in them doing less work so that means less employees."

Government officials will have a meeting with some of the road builders next week.