Cornelius Vanderbilt wrote:Most Road design engineers and contractors don't factor costs of relocation of utilities especially power. Of late road contractors have resorted to blackmailing the company by digging around power poles so that if they fall the public will blame the company. This is at industrial area. Its also in Saba saba, Gathera and many other sites. They should pay these costs and avoid this dangerous scenes.
Working for a utility, the issues are not as simple as they appear. My experience shows that:
1.KPLC are slowest to move their services even when they have been paid to do so.
2. The roads have been widened such that they leave no space for other services, eg Thika rd
3. The cable utilities operate individually. instead of putting their cables in a single duct for example, each one of them installs on the same wayleave and at different times. Some roads have close to 20 cable lines, it is a mess.
4. If you build a road, beware that there are water and sewer lines to serve the same people, so there have to be separate contracts to relocate these services. Remember that service ducts are necessary to cross the services from one side to the other otherwise the natives will cut the road illegally to access services.
5. There is an area of investment for wazuans: tunneling of up to 1m ducts, not many people have the machinery but the demand is there.