Regina Bypass construction runs 24 hours a day

Construction crews are now working through the night on the Regina Bypass east of Tower Road.

Garrett Doyle is the area manager for the project. He says the milder winter weather this year has created the opportunity to schedule crews at night.

“It allows us to progress the work during winter which generally is not available to us, and that will allow us to mitigate potential delays in the next two years such as inclement weather,” he said.

Doyle says filling night shifts won’t impact the cost of the project. Right now the night shift is filled by a crew about 20 per cent of the size of the normal daytime operation.

“Currently our (night) crew is smaller than the daytime crew just because we’ve only been doing nights since Monday,” Doyle said. “But if the progress is good, we’ll increase the night work and the amount of people we have on nights and that’s obviously under review daily.”

When asked if he thinks people will be surprised at a 24 hour construction schedule, Doyle said it’s actually quite normal.

“It’s not unusual for highway projects of this nature to increase production by working longer hours,” he said. “I believe it’s new here in Regina, but generally, it’s something we’ve done before.”

Construction costs for the project were bumped to $1.88 billion in August to account for two additional interchanges and the projected cost of maintenance over the next 30 years. The bypass is a public private partnership and is scheduled to be complete in 2019.