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What is Civil vs. Municipal Engineering?
Civil engineering is a broad discipline that focuses on the design, construction, and maintenance of the built environment, including infrastructure like roads, bridges, buildings, dams, and water supply systems. Civil engineering plays a crucial role in shaping modern society by making sure that structures are safe, efficient, and sustainable. While civil engineering encompasses large-scale projects across various sectors, municipal engineering is a specialized branch that deals specifically with infrastructure and services within cities and towns, such as streets, water distribution, sewage, and waste management. In essence, municipal engineering is a focused subset of civil engineering that directly impacts local communities and urban living. With municipal services being the cornerstone of our firm, your team will be supported by F&V’s team of professionals who are able to address all your project needs.
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Municipal Engineering: F&V serves as Engineer of Record (EOR) or preferred engineer for more than 100 communities across the state; many of which are small- to medium-sized cities, towns, villages, and counties. We have evolved into a “one stop shop” for our municipal clients.
Roadways: F&V studies, designs, and constructs roadways and highways that move you wherever you’re going. Road engineering is about more than vehicles – it’s about what’s right for you and your users,. Our approach is based on client relationships, getting to understand your twists, turns, needs, and goals. We will collaborate with you to design and construct transportation systems that become an integral part of the community. We’ll start with a study and stay working and communicating with you through construction. With 10 offices throughout Michigan and Indiana, it’s quite possible your road is our road.
Sanitary Sewers: F&V provides safe sewer services to protect both our environment and our standard of living. Properly disposing of waste and maintaining the systems that deliver and/or sanitize the wastewater is key to preventing backups and keeping our environment safe. Properly designed, constructed, and maintained sewer systems can have substantial impacts that reduce basement floodings, massive sinkholes, and sewage overflows. We design and construct sanitary sewer systems, pump stations, and wastewater treatment systems that transport and treat the waste properly.
Storm Sewers: F&V enhances the quantity and quality of storm water management to protect human and environmental health. By understanding how and where your storm water runoff flows, we can design, engineer, and construct retentions, detentions, and drains that properly manage storm water. Aiming for both quantity and quality storm water management allows communities to reduce their carbon footprint and protect the environment. We are well-versed in the preparation, planning, design, and evaluation of storm drainage and storm water management systems. Every year we assist our clients with preliminary drainage studies or drainage system improvement projects to alleviate flooding issues.
Watermains: While clean, quality water begins at the treatment plant, the key to communities and businesses receiving the same clean, quality water is the watermains and transmissions lines that deliver it. Breaks, deterioration, and age can affect how the water flows and contaminates its contents. Improving, enhancing, and maintaining water systems and fire hydrants saves lives and makes our communities healthier. F&V designs and constructs supply and distribution mains of all sizes. We also specialize in energy and water efficiency evaluations, asset management, water reliability studies, and water treatment systems.
Additional services:
- Bridges
- Dams
- Parking lots
- Permitting
- Roundabouts

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Industries
Municipalities make up 90% of F&V clients. We work with more than 300 municipalities across Michigan and Indiana.
FAQs
Our approach to civil engineering is to make your goal, our goal. When we understand our client, the project, and the needs, we can provide significant value and design with impact. We can assist with grants and loans to make projects more feasible, and we can provide studies to see where the true problem lies with your infrastructure. With more than 300 professional staff, with varying expertise within the civil engineering realm, we can help with just about any civil/municipal engineering project.