Nova Scotia's auditor general says road paving decisions not backed by objective data

Despite almost $850 million being spent on paving Nova Scotia roads over the past five years, the province is lacking a consistent approach based in evidence when deciding what road repairs to prioritize, according to a report from the auditor general.

The 36-page report, released Tuesday, looks at how the province’s Department of Public Works decides what stretches of roads will be tended to first. 

“We found projects selected each year are not backed by objective data,” said auditor general Kim Adair. 

So how are they making decision around paving? 

The report says the Department of Public Works has the province divided into four districts. Each year, the district engineer from each area puts forward a list of proposed paving projects. 

According to Adair, those lists are made without much to back them up.  

“I would say it’s very informal and subjective,” she said, explaining there wasn’t consistent criteria for ranking project priorities. 

The issue isn’t that the department lacks a way to assess roads to better prioritize repairs. Adair said it has tools to help prioritize work, one of which is an automatic road analyzer that collects information on pavement conditions. 

She said the issue is that even with tools, they are not being used consistently. 

“They have a system that they can load that into, and it generates an optimized list based on their funding level,” Adair said. “But what we found is they’re not they’re not using it each and every year.” 

An example Adair gave was, at the time of the audit in 2025, the list the department was working off for 100-series highways was from 2019. 

Beyond the information collected through the road analyzer, the department gets reports from Nova Scotians about the state of roads. 

“During our two-year audit period, there were 63,000 road-related calls to a provincial contact centre,” Adair said, adding that staff also do regular patrols, but the department lacks a system to record the findings. 

Without a consistent system, the report said, the department may not be looking at all the information available when making decisions about where to send road crews. 

Beyond how projects are selected, the audit flagged concerns about when in their life cycle roads are being paved. 

Adair said the province uses a “worst first approach,” meaning roads at the top of priority lists are already in poor condition by the time work is done. 

“The audit found the department can make more effective use of its available funding through better preventative maintenance,” Adair said. 

Preserving pavement earlier in its life span can help extend the life of roads and prevent the need for more expensive and complicated repairs down the line. 

The report cited an estimate from the department that says every dollar invested in preservation before roads hit 15 years of age could result in avoiding somewhere between $6 and $14 in future costs. 

The report laid out nine recommendations, all of which Public Works accepted with plans to begin implementation in the spring. 

The recommendations include establishing a consistent criteria for prioritizing pavement projects, improving the collection and use of road condition information, and putting together a plan to better preserve roads before they need repairs at a higher price.

“Nova Scotians depend on having a safe and reliable provincial road network, and the department must demonstrate cost-effective, evidence-based decisions are being made each and every year,” Adair said.