Ruekert/Mielke History
The chance association between a young assistant city engineer and an even younger college student was the basis for what has become the consulting engineering firm of Ruekert/Mielke. This two-man operation has evolved into a multidisciplinary firm of over 130 employees, with six different departments and one division focusing on meeting the complex needs of municipal clients. The company now works on projects of such variety and technical sophistication that it is hard to imagine its humble beginnings.
John Mielke and Frank Ruekert, Sr. started moonlighting in their homes at night designing subdivisions for the housing market driven by returning WWII veterans. John came home from a commission in the Army Corps of Engineers to join Frank, then an engineer with the City of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Ruekert/Mielke was formed on May 6, 1946, with the company located in a two-room, upstairs office at 203 North Grand Avenue in Waukesha.
As the firm began to grow, so did its expertise in many new areas. The Hartford Wastewater Treatment Facility pioneered the first use of microscreen tertiary treatment in Wisconsin. The resulting discharge was so clean that it flowed into a trout stream. In the Village of Pewaukee the firm was the first in the nation to use rotating biological contactors to treat the wastewater.
The firm’s fingerprint on southeastern Wisconsin continues with the recent completion of sewer systems for Okauchee Lake, Upper and Lower Nashotah Lakes, Upper and Lower Nemahbin Lakes and Silver Lake. Major award winning downtown revitalization projects have been completed for the Villages of Palmyra and Okauchee. Extensive involvement in Tax Incremental Financing Districts (TIF) for several communities and the resultant economic impact will generate over $2 billion dollars of new tax base.
Ruekert/Mielke’s staff takes great pride in knowing that virtually every community in southeastern Wisconsin has one of their projects as part of its infrastructure. Employees live in all of these communities, and pledge that their ongoing commitment to providing sound solutions to a problem can always be counted upon. The firm’s greatest achievements are tied to the attitude that engineering excellence, and service to our clients, is our most important product.
Municipal Economics & Planning History
Municipal Economics & Planning became a division of Ruekert/Mielke in April 2008. Their new identity reflects both the specialized services that they provide to municipalities and their reputation for innovative thinking. A foundation of solid financial preparation and visionary planning is the key to successful municipal projects. Municipal Economics & Planning is unique in that they understand your community’s needs from both a financial/planning perspective and from the technical and engineering side of infrastructure projects. This comprehensive view – one that sees the entirety of a project – is seldom part of the focus of financial or planning firms.