The City of Riverside has received responses from six firms looking to provide them engineering services starting with fiscal year 2022.

City Administrator Christine Yancey says Riverside isn’t large enough to afford having a full-time engineer on staff, so they’ll continue to contract out engineering services. In March, the city sent out request for qualifications forms to several companies resulting in six replies. She says they will be interviewing those companies to trim the list to three in their efforts to select a firm that can help the city with various projects, “We’re looking for someone who can do the day-to-day engineering for the city as well as larger projects. Now, we fully understand that sometimes you have to go elsewhere if a firm has a particular expertise on a project you would go with them, but for the most part, we’re looking for someone with enough staff and qualifications to cover everything.

Riverside’s current engineering contract is with MMS Consultants of Iowa City. One of the city’s next major projects is the construction of a new community center. Yancey says research into the make-up of the center has included touring similar facilities around the area and meetings of the community center committee. The project is currently estimated at $6 million, and the city council is scheduled to learn more during a presentation at their next regular meeting May 3rd.