DGR Engineering

DGR Engineering does almost all the specialized engineering work that municipal utilities require, including civil and survey engineering, electrical, and water/wastewater work. This shouldn’t be surprising because DGR Engineering was co-founded by John DeWild, an electrical engineer. John started his career at Rock Rapids Municipal Utilities. Later, he met Dick Grant, another electrical engineer, and DGR Engineering was born.

With roots in municipal utilities, DGR is always willing to lend a hand when utilities have a question. “We help our clients through issues like outages. We are always interested in solving problems,” says Chad Rasmussen, Electrical Engineer for DGR.

Chad Rasmussen has been with DGR for 28 years, and he finds that the excellent workplace and employees mean there are many long-timers. “It’s all about relationships. The folks who work at DGR have been there a long time, and people tend to stick around." When it comes to working with municipal utilities Chad says, "We try to be an extension of municipal staff.”

DGR has recently been involved in several interesting projects including designing a number of diesel and natural gas power plants for municipals. DGR has the electrical space capabilities to engage on facility design, power distribution, generation, substations, and transmission, among other areas.

One project Chad has worked on recently makes him particularly proud. “Moorhead Public Service did a large substation expansion to accommodate growth and drive reliability in their city,” says Chad. “That one just came online this fall.”

Another area in which DGR Engineering practices is engineering for smaller airports. Through DGR's Aviation Services Department, “We do runway, taxiway, and surfacing design,” says Chad. “It’s interesting because we have to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to approve our plans on those projects.”

DGR’s excellence shines through with the many awards it has won. DGR Engineering was recognized with a “Top Workplaces’ honor by Iowa Top Workplaces and The Des Moines Register. The company has also won the “Circle of Excellence” award from PSMJ Resources, which recognized DGR as one of 69 exceptional architecture and engineering firms nationwide. DGR has won this award for 11 consecutive years, from 2014 to 2024.

“We always try to understand and work closely with our clients to get a sense of what they need…with our shared abilities, we can do it!” says Chad. That fact is abundantly clear with the good people of DGR there to help.