: Prince of Wales Culvert renewal – Overnight Work beginning October 13, 2015

09 Oct : Prince of Wales Culvert renewal – Overnight Work beginning October 13, 2015

Dear residents,

I would like to share with you the following update received from city officials regarding the Prince of Wales Drive culvert renewal project, just south of Fisher Avenue.  Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at 613-580-2486 or by email at Riley.Brockington@Ottawa.ca.

– Riley

Good afternoon Councillor Brockington,

Further to my last project status update message 1 week ago, we have reached an important milestone on this project:  The tunneling machine has been built, installed within the shaft and is ready to begin boring under Prince of Wales Drive, installing the new concrete pipe culvert as it goes.  A lot of work has gone into reaching this milestone and we have certainly encountered many challenges along the way, but we’re ready to start tunneling and here are a few pictures of the machine in its starting position, beside the old (failing) corrugated steel culvert pipe:

As you know, we have obtained a noise bylaw exemption to allow the tunneling operation to occur continuously through day and night.  This reduces the risk during the tunneling operation.  Rather than start the boring operation today, and work through Thanksgiving weekend, the Contractor has chosen to wait until Tuesday October 13^th to begin tunneling mainly due to the concern of having limited resource available over the Thanksgiving weekend should a problem arise.  The tunneling operation is expected to take 10 days and so we anticipate that it will be completed by the weekend of 24^th October.  We do not anticipate that this will create any major adverse public concerns and the following steps that we have taken:

• A temporary noise barrier wall will be built behind the generator to reflect the sound away from the homes on Valley Ridge Street (Ward 9).
• Backup beepers will be eliminated on the excavator (an approved Ministry procedure will be followed to enable this).
• All waste material from the tunneling operation will be stockpiled on site overnight, for removal by haulage trucks during daytime hours.
• During my site visit on 7^th Oct we conducted a noise survey.  All the equipment that will be working overnight was started up and we assessed the audible impact on Valley Ridge Street.  The noise generated by construction is barely equal to the noise level of traffic on POW Drive.

The Contractor is still behind the original schedule and unlikely to meet the 13th November contract date for substantial completion.  We are tracking schedule very closely and are working with the Contractor to ensure that this contract is completed as soon as possible.  We will be in a much better position to predict the likely completion date in about a week from now, after the tunnel has made some progress through the POW embankment.

Jon