Site development
Sitework is four or five trades stacked on top of each other in a fixed order, and most of the schedule risk on a project is in the handoffs between them. Taking the whole package removes those handoffs: one superintendent, one schedule, and one phone number when the pad date moves.
The package
A full sitework contract from us usually reads like this, in this order:
- Demolition and clearing, existing pavement and structures out
- Erosion control installed before anything is stripped
- Rough grade, cut and fill balanced, pads to plan
- Wet utilities: sewer, water, storm drain, structures, and services
- Joint trench and conduit for the dry utility contractors
- Curb, gutter, sidewalk, ADA ramps, and valley gutters
- Aggregate base and paving
- Striping, signage, and final grade for landscape
- Punch list, as-builts, and the district sign-offs
Concrete flatwork and ADA
Curb and gutter goes in on machine where the run is long enough to justify it and hand-formed where it is not. Sidewalk, cross gutters, and driveway approaches go to the agency standard detail.
ADA ramps are their own discipline now. Running slope, cross slope, landing dimensions, and the truncated dome placement are all measurable, and an inspector will measure them. We build to the current standard plan and we shoot the finished ramp before the forms come off, because a ramp that is out by a percent is a demolition job rather than a repair.
Working next to an occupied building
Half the sitework we do in the North State is a remodel of a site that never closed: a school over the summer, a shopping center that stays open, a plant that runs three shifts. That is a phasing problem more than a construction problem. We plan it as one, with temporary access, plated trench, dust and noise limits written into the schedule, and a look ahead every week so the owner knows which entrance closes when.
What sitework runs
| Item | Range |
|---|---|
| Curb and gutter, machine placed | $32 to $58 per LF |
| Sidewalk, 4 inch | $9 to $16 per SF |
| ADA curb ramp, to current standard | $3,500 to $8,500 each |
| Commercial pad, demo through paving | $9 to $22 per SF |
| Valley gutter or cross gutter | $18 to $34 per SF |
| Retaining wall, segmental block | $45 to $95 per face SF |
Unit ranges are what this kind of work has been going for in the Sacramento Valley, put here so you can sanity-check a budget. They are not a bid. Quantities, access, haul distance, and the spec move every one of them.
Questions we get
Yes. Plenty of our work is one division of a larger job: the underground on somebody else's site, or the paving after another contractor's grading. We bid what you send us.
Grading, underground, structures, base, and trucking are ours, with our own people and equipment. Asphalt paving is ours. Striping, landscape, and dry utility connections are subcontracted, and we name the subcontractors in the bid.
A superintendent whose job is that project, not a rotation between four of them. You will have a cell number, a weekly look-ahead, and a foreman on the ground every day work is happening.
For anything over a couple of weeks of work, six to ten weeks out in the busy season, less in winter for underground. Tell us the pad date you need and we will tell you honestly whether we can hold it.
Photos are stand-ins until our own job photos are up: public domain images from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service, plus freely licensed photos from Wikimedia Commons (CC0 and CC BY-SA 4.0).
Request a bid: site development
Scope, rough quantities, the town, and when the site is available. If there is a bid date on it, put the date and time in and we will confirm receipt the same day.
- The yard
- (530) 555-0142
- Bids and plan sets
- bids@northstateconstruction.com
- Where we work
- Butte, Glenn, Tehama, Colusa, Shasta, Sutter, and Yuba counties
- Yard at 4180 Midway, Chico, CA 95928
CSLB Class A General Engineering · license pending, expected June