Admin/Tech Support

• Marine Facilities
• Roads
• Town Buildings
• Support Services
• Surveying

Marine Facilities

Another important aspect of the Division’s responsibilities is the improvement and/or repair of Town marine facilities. Where marine facilities are concerned, as much time is spent obtaining necessary environmental permits for the work as is spent performing the work itself. Marine projects vary from pier replacement to harbor dredging. 


Roads
The condition and safety of the town’s roads and bridges is an important part of Engineering’s responsibilities. The Division maintains a road condition database, which is used to determine how the Town’s limited resources will be best spent to keep the road system in the best possible condition with the funds available. Staff engineers design repairs to town roads and bridges and oversee the implementation of those repairs.

The Admin/Tech Support Division investigates storm water drainage problems affecting town roads and prepares redesigns to rehabilitate failed drainage systems or designs plans to eliminate existing problems. Known drainage problems throughout the town have been assigned a priority ranking and as funds become available, the repairs are contracted and constructed.

Excavations (usually utilities performing gas line installation or maintenance, or for installation of a new driveway) within town road layouts require permits that are issued by Engineering. In addition to issuing the permits, Engineering also licenses the contractors who do the work and inspects the excavation locations to insure that the contractors properly restore the road surface to its original condition.

Town Buildings
Excepting the Town’s schools, all town buildings fall within the realm of the Admin/Tech Support Division. This includes working towards compliance with handicapped accessibility requirements of both federal and state law. For major building renovations or repairs, Engineering, in conjunction with the Structures and Grounds Division, oversees all design and construction. The most recently completed building construction is the new Highway Division Maintenance Garage and the new Senior Center.

Support Services
The Admin/Tech Support Division is the keeper of public facilities records. These records include plans of streets, drainage systems, sewage collection and treatment plans, plans of municipal buildings, waterfront facilities, parking lots and recreation lands. To accomplish this charge, staff utilizes the mapping and data base capabilities of a Geographic Information System and the town’s older paper mapping and written files.

The Admin/Tech Support Division coordinates the assignment of house identification numbers and acts as liaison with the telephone company to insure that correct building addresses are included in the database for the E-911 Emergency Response System. Engineering also researches proposed new street names to assure the name being proposed for a new road is sufficiently unique to avoid confusion with existing street names. In addition, a continuous updating of the address database is required to accommodate inclusion of new land subdivisions and new construction. This vital service is required to permit instant identification of all property addresses and a rapid response by the police and fire departments to the physical locations of the telephones used to call 911.

The Division supplies technical expertise to a number of Town departments, boards and agencies. Engineering staff reviews site, drainage and road construction plans for conformance with established design standards as part of the Site Plan Review process required by the Zoning By-Laws. Technical support is provided to the Planning Board and the Board of Appeals for the review of road and drainage design plans submitted by land developers for new sub-divisions. Additional involvement by staff includes road and drainage construction inspection to assure that it complies with established Planning Board’s construction standards and the plans as approved by the Board.

The Division records and plans of land subdivision within the Town of Barnstable are available for public review. Assistance is provided to the Assessing Department by annually updating the Town’s Assessors Maps to reflect any changes made in the subdivision of land within the past year, including the assignment of assessing parcel numbers.

The Division maintains a listing of all public and private roads within the town, as well as layouts of the town ways and many private ways.

Engineering staff works to support the Town’s Geographic Information System, adding engineering data to the system and/or using data from the system to design projects and to provide a variety of maps and data to staff, other departments, and the public.

Surveying

The Surveying Section of the Admin/Tech Support Division, under the direction of the Town Surveyor, provides the Town with land and construction surveying services. Survey is called upon to locate boundaries on the ground for town road layouts and other town properties. Field surveyors provide the detailed site information needed to design projects and then provide accurate site definition markings and elevations for the newly designed project on the ground. There are two Computer Aided Design (CAD) operators within the section who translate digitized field information collected by the field survey team into detailed plans. Due to the new CAD technology, this can be accomplished within hours from the time the CAD operators receive the field data. In addition, the CAD operators work with project engineers to create two and three-dimensional drawings for new construction projects.