KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri Department of Transportation officials say recent soggy weather is having an impact on construction projects across the Kansas City metro area.
Brian Burger, MoDOT district construction and materials engineer, said crews can do minor work on rainy days, such as pavement and sidewalk repairs, but construction needs to be pushed back until conditions dry out.
“It is hard to work when it’s raining,” he said Tuesday. “It's not very safe to work when it’s raining. You can’t mill and you can’t lay asphalt, but it also affects the material. So the rock that is supposed to go back out on the road is soaking wet or the ground is holding water and you can’t do excavation work or grading work, so it really puts us back several days.”
Burger said that crews have had to be flexible after heavy rains last week and more rain in the forecast through Thursday.
“Several of our projects have worked on weekends now,” he said. “We’re trying to make up for days that they couldn’t work during the week.”
However, Burger said extra time is built into project schedules to account for bad weather.
“It really hasn't affected the projects too bad yet,” Burger said. “We do build some of that into the schedule. But it has rained significantly.”
The rainy weather comes after a cold, snowy winter that also made construction more difficult. Work on the Interstate 435 and Missouri 210 interchange was originally expected to be done by December, but winter weather delayed the project.
Officials now hope it will be completed this summer.
