Staff
For the fourth year in a row, DGR Engineering employees donated food items, hoping to make it a better Thanksgiving for all in the area. Rock Rapids office donations were delivered to the ATLAS of Lyon County Bread of Life Food Distribution on November 16. Sioux Falls office donations (245 lbs.!) were delivered to Feeding South Dakota on November 18.
Miriam Martens will be presenting “Ammonia Nitrification in Wastewater” on November 2, 2022 at the Southwest Minnesota Wastewater Operators Association Section Meeting in St. Peter, MN.
Congratulations to the 2022 DGR Engineering service award winners, who were honored at this year’s fall gathering on October 15. Curt Dieren was presented with his 30-year service award. Curt is an electrical engineer and department head of the Rock Rapids Electrical Power Department.
20-year service award recipients were also honored: Justin Christensen is a civil engineer in the Rock Rapids Civil/Survey Department; Justin Groen is a engineering technician in the Water Services Department in Rock Rapids; Troy Metzger is an electrical engineer in the Rock Rapids Electrical Power Department; Kyle Mullenix is a civil engineer in the Sioux City office; and Dan Van Schepen is a civil engineer in the Rock Rapids Civil/Survey Department.
Other service award recipients:
10-year Awards: Justin Blauwet, Jolene Fisher, Sam Johnson, Tom Low, Brian Meyer, Jesse Morris and Logan Smidt.
5-year awards: Austin Gross, Tina Hansen, Evan Laursen, Amy Leuthold, Jacob Morris, Adam Norman, Jericho Poppinga, Michael Postma and Kelli Van Kley.
Blair Metzger, president of DGR Engineering (DGR), received the Wayne E. Knabach Excellence in Power Award at the Center for Power Systems Studies banquet Oct. 3 at McCrory Gardens Education and Visitor Center.
The annual aw
ard is presented to an engineer whose lifetime contributions have advanced the power industry in the Upper Midwest.
Metzger, a Rock Rapids, IA native, graduated from the electrical engineering program at South Dakota State University in 1986 and joined DGR as a design engineer. He rose through the ranks and served as DGR’s electrical power group department head from 2002 to 2010, when he was appointed company president.
Metzger was nominated for the Knabach Award by Chad Rasmussen, assistant electrical power group department head at DGR.
He wrote, “Over the course of his career, Blair’s focus has been on providing services to municipal utilities … Blair’s commitment to municipal electrical engineering was instrumental in expanding DGR’s service territory to include many Minnesota municipal utility clients. He is an expert in power supply and rate making issues in the Upper Midwest, assisting many clients with his rate development expertise.”
Through his 36-year career at DGR, Metzger has worked with scores of communities, mostly smaller ones, in Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska.
DGR, founded in 1952, has 150 employees with offices in Rock Rapids, Sioux Falls and Sioux City, Iowa, and specializes in aviation, civil, electrical power, survey, wastewater and water engineering. Since 2014, it has received the Circle of Excellence for overall engineering performance by PSMJ Resources, a leading management consulting firm for architecture and engineering firms.
The Center for Power Systems Studies is housed within the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering at South Dakota State and has been an advocate for the power industry and a supporter of future power engineers since its formation in 1968.