After the cooperation project on the efficient management of the municipal wastewater system between the wastewater utilities of the city of Vechta and the business administration department of the PHWT was successfully launched a few months ago, new opportunities have now arisen to further expand and intensify the cooperation.
In the building yard of the city of Vechta, too, a lot of work is outsourced to external companies by means of tenders, because, on the one hand, the city’s own capacities are currently not available and, on the other hand, external solutions proved to be more cost-effective in the past. However, due to the continuous growth of the city and the additional tasks associated with it, the conditions have changed fundamentally, so that the insourcing of work is now also being considered in the area of the building yard. The aim is to find an economically optimal solution for the city, taking into account the new framework conditions. To this end, Peter Eckhardt and Dörthe Heller (both from the Vechta building yard) met with Prof. Dr. Maik Büsing (PHWT).
The expansion of the cooperation is to begin with an economic analysis of the care and maintenance of the roundabouts in the catchment area of the city. In addition to the roundabouts in the city centre, this also includes the roundabouts on Vechta’s northern bypass. Since all roundabouts are designed differently, the maintenance effort and thus also the costs vary greatly. A decisive factor here is already the planning of the roundabouts before the actual construction phase. An elaborately designed and individually planted roundabout is of course a real “figurehead” for any municipality, but a number of follow-up costs are defined at an early stage that are difficult to change in future management.
For this reason, the joint project will not only discuss how to maintain the roundabouts as economically as possible, but also define standards with regard to the basic design and intensity of maintenance. In this way, it should be possible to ensure an early estimate of the follow-up costs for future construction projects.
Photo (PHWT): Dörthe Heller (Bauhof Vechta) and Prof. Dr. Maik Büssing (PHWT) in front of the city map of Vechta where they discuss future joint projects.
