Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[ZEBuilder]

The Province has begun early works for the Grand River Bridges through the 2023-3045 contract, issued to Kiewit. They're clearing land that will allow for advanced grading operations to occur. This allows for some additional geotechnical work to occur for the bridges, that geotech work was delayed for various reasons that I'm not at liberty to discuss. The bridges themselves are however close to having the design and construction contract completed (pending things like the remaining geotech work).

Kiewit has a site office set up off of Shirley and have already cleared significant portions of land down around the Walter Bean Trail.

I’ve been surprised by the scale of the clearing and grading that is happening.  Is it just preparation for the bridge work or is it also starting clearing and grading for the rest of the highway?

It also seems like they must have some rough idea of the bridge design in order to know what to grade/clear.  But maybe they don’t need anything more than rough location?

This is preparation for the bridge work, they are conducting clearing and grading on everything within the scope of the bridge contract. Nothing right now that is being cleared is associated with the rest of the highway unless they have modified the contract since I saw it last.

They have way more than a rough idea of the bridge design, they're past the 90% design stage and know exactly where piers are going along with dozens of other aspects, they have a few outstanding issues to work through and then the bridge design is complete but those issues won't substantially change the design.  In general when it comes to design work there are minimal changes between 90% and 100%, 60% and 90% are often very similar as well so they could have started grading works at 60% and have minimal rework when it comes time to actual construction.