The City of Windsor (the City) has hired a contractor, CoCo Paving Inc., for winter road clearing services through a solicitation process. The contract is in effect for seven winter seasons starting from November 1, 2016 with an option for an additional 1 three years. Public Works - Operations designed 17 routes for total of 853 km which are assigned to the 17 trucks of the contractor. In the 2017/18 winter season, the contractor’s snow plow/salt trucks cleared the routes and traveled 135,191 kms on the routes based on the truck GPS data we collected. In 2018/19 winter season, the total distance traveled on the routes was lower at 68,928 kms when there was less snow weather.

Payments to the contractor for these seasons were $2,458,000 and $1,871,000 respectively. When considering the payment total it is important to note that there are several components: the guaranteed minimum operating hours, operating hours exceeding minimum hours, standby hours and equipment daily standby rate as well as supervisor hours. The payments resulted in an average cost for road clearance per winter event day of $76.81K (2017/18) and $77.96K (2018/19).

The terms of contract for winter road clearance are such that the City supplies the salt and salt brine whereas other resources including salter/plow trucks, drivers, and supervisors shall be made available by the contractor. The City issues payment certificates on a monthly basis to the contractor. Technical Team within Public Works - Operations prepares a detailed report to summarize operating hours and standby hours for each contractor truck on each snow event day based on supervisor logs, timecards and Global Positioning System (GPS) records. (Each contractor truck is equipped with a City owned GPS transponder.) The instances of truck operating exceptions such as late arrivals, no shows and equipment breakdowns are also captured from supervisor logs and included in the summary report. The summary report is provided to Contract Management. Based on the summary report, the Contract Coordinator applies the contract specified rates to the hours and calculates penalties according to instances of exceptions.

Payment made to contractor
(in $’000s)