Pavement Maintenance Checklist - PART 3: COMPLETING YOUR PROJECT

Congratulations! It’s really happening.

Your parking lot project has been on a journey that started with basic budget planning and is now in the final stretch towards becoming reality! 

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into this project and this point, and I want to help make sure that pays off with a great finished product. 

Let’s dive into some of the details to help ensure the project is completed properly, your goals are realized and you maximize the full value of your investment!

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A Year in the Life of a Parking Lot - Part 3 of 3

SPRING / SUMMER

1 Month Before the Project

‍1. Ask your contractor about anything that you need to do to get your property ready for the project.

Does your lot need to be swept before the work is completed? Does work by another contractor (interior construction, landscaping, tree removal, concrete, excavation, etc) need to get wrapped up? 

If you have other projects going on at the property, it’s a good idea to double check with your paving contractor to make sure they won’t be blocked or prevented from completing their scheduled work.

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‍2. Make a phase plan with your contractor if you need one.

If completing all of the work at once isn’t feasible for your property or your operations schedule, you’ll want to discuss the plan of attack with your contractor. A map showing the “phase-by-phase” approach for blocking off each section of the lot during the project is essential. 

Certain services will need a phase map more often than others. For example, sealcoating, paving, and striping often cover a significant portion of the surface area of your parking lot. If you don’t have extra parking nearby then you’ll probably need to block off the lot in smaller sections. Scheduling the work “after-hours” can also solve this problem.

Sidewalk repairs, crack sealing, and drain pads are a few examples of services that can usually be done without a huge disruption to your parking lot, so you probably won’t need a phasing plan for those services.

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‍3. Finalize the schedule dates with your contractor (barring any weather issues).

Not long after signing a contract, you should be able to discuss a start date with your contractor. The more flexible your project is in terms of scheduling, the easier it should be to get the work on the contractors calendar. Of course things like weather and equipment issues can disrupt the schedule, so it’s often best to think in terms of a range of time. (“The week of June 2nd” Or “The second or third week of May” for example).

If getting your parking lot ready will require a lot of coordination (sealcoating at a busy apartment complex, for instance), a good contractor will do everything they can to commit to and hit a certain day. You can pray that rain doesn’t decide to ruin those well-laid plans!

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‍4. Pass along schedule dates and getting-ready instructions to your tenants. Coordinate entrance closures, get signs for directing traffic, then finalize and distribute plans for alternative parking options, if needed.

Not every parking lot requires this extra step, but for situations like the busy apartment complex I mentioned above, you know that getting people ready for a parking lot project isn’t quite as simple as putting a date on the calendar. 

With the phasing plan in place and the date on the calendar it’s time to communicate that plan and set everything in motion to execute the parking plan during the actual construction project.

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‍5. Work with accounting to get your contractor set up in your system, make sure you are aligned on payment terms and pay your deposit.

One other task to get out of the way quickly after you sign a contract is to work with your accounting team to get the contractor into your payment system and make sure your deposit has been paid quickly. A late or missing deposit could delay the start of your project, so you’ll want to get this process started right away to avoid any surprises.

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‍1 Week Before the Project

6. Arrange to have dumpsters, trailers, or other obstructions moved from any surface that needs to be cleared.

These items may have already been called out in Step 1, but it’s a good idea to take a final look at everything in your parking lot that needs to be moved before the contractor arrives. Whether it’s a dumpster sitting on the asphalt (or on the concrete dumpster pad that needs to be replaced), the tractor trailer that has been there so long you don’t even notice it any more, or something else that is sitting on the pavement that will soon be worked on, now is a good time to make sure nothing is blocking the contractor’s way.

‍7. Adjust your sprinkler schedule to make sure nothing will be wet the day of the project or for 24 hours after completion.

It’s a good idea to adjust your sprinkler schedule around the time of your parking lot project. Most of these systems are on autopilot and can cause problems and complications.

This is especially important for services like sealcoating (which requires at least 24 hours of dry, warm weather to fully cure), but sprinklers can also be problematic for concrete, striping, and paving work if they turn on at the wrong time. 

Try to make sure the lot will be dry when the crew arrives and for 24 hours after the final phase (especially if it’s sealcoating). If you are starting a longer length project, you might want to ask your contractor when and where they’d like the sprinklers turned off if you’re worried that the grass won’t do well unwatered for the full project duration. 

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‍8. Identify any “lost vehicles”(ie vehicles that are parked on your lot and don’t regularly move) and arrange to have them moved or towed.

Know those two cars in your parking lot that never seem to move? Now is your reminder to find the owners of those vehicles and ask them to move their vehicles. Cutout cookies are delicious; cutout patches of bare sealcoating where your contractor couldn’t spray underneath a car? Not so much. If you can’t track down the owner, coordinate with a local towing company to move the vehicles to another location.

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‍9. Post parking instruction reminders at the property.

If your property needed a special parking plan, you probably sent information to everyone affected by the temporary parking adjustments, but it’s also a good idea to put out temporary signage to help people remember that this is that day that you were talking about where they would need to plan a little extra time to park in a nearby parking lot. Yard signs, printed flyers, and A-frame sidewalk signs are all good options.

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‍10. Touch base with your contractor to make sure nothing has changed with the schedule.

Hopefully this step is just an extra precaution, but the truth is sometimes contractor’s plans change. And hopefully if they did change your contractor has already looped you in…but maybe it slipped their mind. All that to say, if you don’t want a surprise the day of, it might be a good idea to check in around a week before the schedule date to make sure the plan is still set to move forward as expected. 

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2 Days Before the Project

11. Check the weather to look for any potential delays.

Another piece of “schedule insurance” if you will to help keep you in the loop on any possible changes to the plan - you may want to consider double checking the weather forecast during the day or two before your project. 

For most pavement services, heavy rain = risking quality issues. Depending on the service, some projects will be able to move forward with a short window of rain in the forecast if most of the day is clear. But some projects simply won’t be able to proceed if the forecast is calling for rain. This can be especially true for significant sealcoating projects where dry weather and adequate curing time has a direct correlation to the quality of the finished product.

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Day of the Project

12.  Plan to be available as quickly as possible on the day of the project to answer any last minute questions or to address any change orders.

A good contractor shouldn’t need you to look over their shoulder in order to complete the project, but it’s a good idea to plan to be available to answer any questions that come up on the day of the project. Sometimes phasing plans or barricading isn’t totally straightforward when they get onsite, or maybe removing the old material will reveal a new subgrade issue that no one anticipated before the work began. There are several different reasons why your contractor may need to speak with you on the day of the project, so we recommend doing your best to be available.

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‍13. Walk the job site (or ask someone local to walk it) with the scope of work to verify that everything was completed as contracted and there are no quality concerns; look for any lingering clean up.

If at all possible, we recommend physically walking (or having someone onsite walk) the parking lot when the project is wrapping up to get eyes on the work that was completed. If there are any questions or concerns, now is the best time to address those to make sure that adjustments can be made while the crew is still on site and can quickly respond. Both you and your contractor will want to avoid drawing out the project, so communicate quickly with any concerns you have. Now is a great time to ask for any last minute instructions about things like how long to keep traffic off the pavement, when sprinklers can be turned back on, etc.

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‍Week After the Project

14. Make sure accounting has everything they need to process the final payment.

Now that you have a finished product that you’re happy with, it’s time to do one more check in with the accounting team to sign off on processing the final payment for the work that was completed.

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You made it! Your parking lot project is complete!

If there is one single thing that we hope you took away from this project breakdown, we hope that it’s the difference a well executed process can make. While it’s a far cry from rocket science, parking lot projects have a lot of moving pieces. A good contractor and good plan can make a huge difference in how smoothly a project goes. And sometimes the best laid plans change due to unforeseen circumstances. You need a partner who can help you adapt quickly and effectively to new adjustments. A subpar paving contractor can leave you feeling like you’re in a rowboat with one missing oar. We don’t want that for you!

If you have a parking lot project coming up, we’d love to help make sure that you aren’t rowing alone. 

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You can also CLICK to circle back to PART 1 or PART 2