Looking to catch up on the massive backlog of construction projects across the city, Moose Jaw City Council has approved the creation of a 2nd in-house construction crew, as part of their long-term plan to provide more resources to maintenance, repair and upgrades of the water and sewer system.

Director of Engineering with the city of moose jaw, Josh Mickelborough.

"The additional construction crew is a fairly significant move by council to address our operational challenges with respect to water main breaks and dealing with aging infrastructure. That request was to transition some of those seasonal or temporary employees to permanent and then the addition of staff so we can address the backlog of items."

The idea of creating a second in-house design team was first discussed in the 2019 budget and will be paid for using the $500,000 that was being paid out to engineering consulting firms that were designing the cast-iron program.

"As it sits right now we have over 100 (137) infrastructure failures or repairs that are required, and they range from water main breaks to service connections, to valve repairs, hydrant repairs, its not good to have that backlog. It has a meaningful impact on folks day to day lives."

"Right now given our current capital investment, we're probably projecting around the 5-year mark before we turn the corner on the infrastructure failures and repairs. If we continue to do the replacements and invest the capital in things like road rehabilitation, our water main replacement, we should be in a situation with the additional staff to be caught up."

"I want to be clear that we do hundreds of jobs every year, and that 137 [infrastructure projects and repairs] is just accumulating now. The jobs are changing out on it regularly and we do a lot more repair work than that 137. With that additional crew and the failures that we experience every year, we're projecting that by about year 5 we should be backlog free on the repairs."

In a press release sent out by the city, it states that 'This initiative is a direct result of the City of Moose Jaw Strategic Plan Objective of An Entrepreneurial Civic Administration and it meets the values of being customer-focused in our deliberations and actions, responsive to citizen needs, solution-focused and start with “Yes” when serving the community'.