Commissioners Receive Construction Bids

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Before all the orange barrels and summertime detours, come all the engineering details and financial budgeting. 

Muskingum County Engineer’s Project Manager Shawn Johnson recently met with the county commissioners to discuss county highway concerns and open bids for upcoming construction projects. 

“So every year we apply for certain pots of funding through the CEAO, so it’s the County Engineer’s Association of Ohio,” Johnson said. “This particular round we applied for safety funds and they fund up to $300,000 dollars of guardrail projects or you can do a grant for $150,000 dollars for pavement marking projects. So we applied for both and were fortunate enough to get them both funded.”

The engineer’s office inspects county roads for various issues to determine their needs and how strongly they should be prioritized.   

“So I actually did a set of plans for both projects,” Johnson said. “So I took the list that our inspector come up with and then you know we whittled it down to the ones we definitely wanted and made sure stayed under the budget limit. And then included those in the set of plans. And so those go off to the ODOT for approval being as there’s federal money involved. And so that’s pretty much how those go. So there are specific roads for both guard rail and pavement marking.”

Safety projects such as pavement markings and guardrail installation and replacement are many times more easily funded because of documented crash data that can be used to verify the needs.