Construction crews will be starting a project on Monday worth $650,000 to blast part of a rock face along Ord Road in Kamloops.

Capital projects manager Darren Crundwell says for drivers, there will be single-lane traffic during construction – which will happen from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday – and delays of up to 20 minutes when crews are blasting rock.

He says this project has been on the books for several years. It will see 4,000 cubic meters of rock scaled, which is the equivalent of nearly two full-sized Olympic swimming pools.

“(Conditions) do change, with freeze-thaw and with ice, and with moisture and water getting in. And just with changing conditions from a geological perspective, we do inspect any of the critical rock faces every year. And this one’s been on the radar for a while.”

The project will take six-to-eight weeks. Crundwell says it will have to be done by March 15 so that crews don’t interfere with rattlesnakes that are breeding.

“We’re in a habitat area there and we have to respect that. We can still work past (March 15) but we’d have to other measures in place, biologists on site and whatnot,” Crundwell says.

“It’s not Trans Mountain; we want to get out of there anyways and not overlap if they are doing anything then, they’re not scheduled to. But it is an environmental consideration, it’s not (Trans Mountain) for why we want to get out of there for March 15th.”