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SMC Gov Seeking bids for $2-3M Job to move Airport road; Extend runway
- Thread starter David
- Start date
kwillia
n/a
Asphalt is expensive material to make to spec... and airport runway spec is very specific and each batch has to be analyzed and approved by an inspector. You also have to take into consideration that bidder, "prime", typically has to sub out the majority of the contract and this requires a trucking "broker" who's paid to line up the right amount of trucks and equipment (with operators) required for any given day. That has it's own cost because there aren't trucks just sitting around in a lot waiting for a job of this size to come up. Independents who are used as subs for these types of contracts have to have other means of staying afloat so many are already locked in to doing other projects. Then you have to factor in the costs of each piece of equipment that sits on the job site. Regardless of if is moving on any given day, if it is sitting on the jobsite waiting to be used it has to be 'making money' because if it is sitting there it can't be used at any other job/project. Equipment, trucks and employees all come with big expense so you always want them working or you start to go in the hole. That all adds up to big money.
@RoseRed When I try to open it from Windows, it gives an error. But, if you have 7-Zip installed (recommended). You can right-click it and say open with 7-Zip and it opens right up. A bunch of PDFs in there. Here is the one u r looking for is attached. The PDF is much higher-res than the jpg I created.
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That's an excellent analysis and I don't dispute anything you said. However, I'm just curious if you took every company involved in the process --- from the asphalt providers to the independent truckers to the prime --- and calculated their actual profit from the job, what percentage of the overall project cost would that represent. I'm not saying it's too little or too much profit. Just some odd curiosity I have.
Thanks!
I'll be a pessimist here in opining that no matter what they do, a mostly rural county, without easy access to a major interstate or rail-lines, is never going to be a draw to anything other than a naval/military base where the isolation is part of the security.
kwillia
n/a
Another factor I forgot to present that nobody thinks about... when a company bids the job and is given the 'projected timeframe' of when the job is expected to begin/end they map out future bids based on that information. That means when they win a paving job on base or with the county or state and then the start date slips because of one of a bazillion red tape reasons, they have all of that manpower suddenly unemployed on the front end and then double booked on the back end which can lead to default of the next contract if they don't start the next one on time. Because this is a frequent occurrence, bidders have to do their best to guess when it comes to choosing what they can bid on that would keep the fleet working, but not over book them. Add to it that you never know what bids you will win so if you are counting on winning certain ones and therefore don't bid on others that have work beginning/ending in those same timeframes, if you end up no winning what you expected its too late to line up the other work. All of that factors in to what's left for "profit". If you stop paying your workforce because you don't have the next job lined up correctly yet, you will no longer have a reliable workforce. That 'overhead' comes out of the 'profit' of previous jobs.That's an excellent analysis and I don't dispute anything you said. However, I'm just curious if you took every company involved in the process --- from the asphalt providers to the independent truckers to the prime --- and calculated their actual profit from the job, what percentage of the overall project cost would that represent. I'm not saying it's too little or too much profit. Just some odd curiosity I have.
Unless you are somehow tied to a company that uses the airport, you are not likely to see much benefit from the longer runway. It will allow slightly larger business jets to use the airport, that's pretty much it.
Back when this white elephant of a 'terminal' was built, there were plans to bring commercial air service to St Marys. There are even rental car counters and a baggage handling in the terminal. Then the feds changed their rules on funding of 'essential air service' and those plans simply died. In the past, there was commuter service into places like Easton and Cumberland, but that all died off with changes in airline rate structures and the EAS program.
Chris0nllyn
Well-Known Member
with the time it takes to get to an airport, then security, I wonder if an air taxi type service would be viable.
There use to be an airline that ran a shuttle that went from DC to Philly, to NYC, and back. It use to service places like NE Philly Airport and West Trenton. We tagged the service the Ranson Rabbit.
I've used government air and being able to fliy to/from the general aviation terminals at airports or even to airports that did not have commercial service, was a huge time saver. You could load the plan with people and do a one day out / back for a meeting. It eliminated a large number of travel hours.
The problem is the people who authorize travel expenses, the rule makers, don't really care about the travelers time or convience (or for that matter safety). To them it comes down to dollars, and dollars for each individual portion. If you took the cost of mileage, parking, airfare, hotel and per diem, for a one day meeting, and compared it to the cost of using a general aviation flight, it would probably be more efficient to use the flight.
At your destination you don't need individual vehicles, you get enough rentals to shuttle people to the local meeting place and back to the airport.