And hello and welcome to Forum 360.

It's our program featuring topics with a global outlook and then a local view.

Today we're going to be talking about civil engineering and how governments, county governments get involved in engineering and the role of county engineers.

Today, I’m your host, Bill Steven Saus, and our guest is Andy Conrad.

- Good morning.

- Good morning.

And you are involved in civil engineering, but you're also surveying the role of a county engineer.

Very extensive, but a hard working profession.

So tell us a little bit about the background of your involvement as a county engineer.

What got you started?

And then we'll talk a little bit about the office of profession.

- So, I'm Andy Conrad, the Medina County engineer and lifelong resident of Medina County and growing up, was always more of an outdoors person and, you know, math came pretty easy so engineering was a good fit for me.

I have three older brothers, and two of them are mechanical engineers and I couldn't sit in the office all day I like to be outside.

So civil was the discipline that I decided to go into and for— I went to University of Akron, civil engineering and to become a county engineer in Ohio, we're the only state that requires the county engineer to be both a licensed professional engineer and a licensed professional land surveyor.

- Surveyor also.

- So I'm a land surveyor as well.

So at University of Akron, that is a four year degree to get your civil engineering degree.

And then going back and getting a two year associate degree in land surveying.

And then you have to work as an apprentice as such and for four years in both.

So it’s six years of schooling, eight years of practical (unintelligible) experience, before you can sit to take the professional licensing exam.

So, my wife says I'm crazy, I should become a doctor it would have been quicker.

But... - So it is involved.

- It is involved.

- Getting educated as an engineering professional, civil engineer especially.

Tell us a little bit about the history of engineering for what we call the the county engineer in Ohio.

It started back in the early 1800s, right?

- Yeah.

The state of Ohio became a statehood in 1803.

And at that time they granted, I think it was the courts, the role of appointing a county surveyor to help with the land division as we're coming across, you know, developing as a state, ownership of land is a big deal.

And, you know, having accurate records of who owns what land and the county surveyor at that time was in charge and tasked with the survey data and being a repository for that.

And so as the role of county engineer, it kind of evolved from the county surveyor, which was first appointed.

It was a three year term.

Then it you know, at one point it became a longer term and then, we became— The county engineer as we became more of a transportation, dependent role in the early 1900s, in the 1920s, it became an elected position of county engineer.

But one of the interesting things is that even though we became the county engineer, we didn't lose all of our county surveyor duties and that's why you have to be both a registered professional engineer and surveyor is because even though we, you know, transitioned into the engineering world for transportation, we still hold the role of the county surveyor.

- Now, you know, when you think about it, Andy, the Western Reserve area, which is northeast Ohio, that transitioned, you know, from the Connecticut land owners that came here and they sent their various surveyors.

So at one point they were independent surveyors coming from Connecticut.

But then in 1803, as you mentioned, it started becoming a state responsibility.

So, where we are here, the studio, Hudson in Summit County, once was Portage County, and then Medina County, and Portage County met.

And Trumbull County was a large one, Ashtabula, all these Mahoning, Stark, Columbiana.

So the area in the Western Reserve evolved, correct?

- Yeah.

So, currently there's 88 counties in Ohio and when it first date you have the, the outlines of the counties look much different than they do currently.

A lot of them are much smaller now as we grew in the number of counties and our borders have definitely changed.

Sometimes when we need old records, we can go up to the Western Reserve Historical Society and get some of the old surveying documents there.

But sometimes we do need to call on some of our neighboring counties because they may have some of the records that were originally part of Medina County but are now in some of the adjoining counties.

- Now you have an association that you're very active and it's the Association of the County Engineers of Ohio.

- Correct.

- And so you interface and work together with the other county engineers and surveying responsibilities are discussed.

Are there any issues that in the last since you've been active that you think are important to discuss?

- Oh.

Wow.

How much time do we have?

- A couple minutes.

Let's do two.

- Yeah.

Okay.

No, there's lots of things that are very important as far as things coming through our association.

Probably the one of the more hot topics isn't surveying related, but more bridge related.

The federal government has put a lot of emphasis on evaluation and inspection of our bridges and load rating each bridge.

So each bridge, my load rating is what is the load carrying capacity of a structure.

- So you see signs that you have erected on the, on the county roads that show weight?

- Yes.

- Must be limited.

- Yes.

- That's an interesting.

- So that is something that is a, you know, as a kind of a reaction to the bridge collapse up in Minnesota.

You know, more than a— - The twin Cities was one of the interstates, right?

- Yeah.

So that is something that has been a focus for our office in dealing with our County Engineers Association is making sure that we're as a state, each of the counties are compliant with the federal regulations, so that's something that we actively work on all the time.

- When you study or look into the role of county engineers and the profession, county engineers, it often talks about developing and improving the infrastructure of the county.

So you have to oversee the projects.

You have to do cost estimates.

Look at the funding sources.

Tell us a little bit about the funding sources, which many of us don't realize where your funding comes from for the roads, the bridges and other activities.

- So the vast majority of the funding from my office comes from two sources, the first being the gas tax.

- Gasoline taxes?

- Gasoline tax.

When you fuel up your car, there is a percentage of the cost per gallon that is a state of Ohio tax and then also a federal gas tax.

And so the, when the state tax gets distributed, goes down it's collected as a whole and is redistributed back to the counties and we get an even percentage of that.

The municipal governments get some, ODOT get some, but then... The federal gas tax, we get some of that funding back through our municipal planning organization, which is a five county group called NOACA, up out of Cleveland and we get some federal funds for them.

But, and the second source of income for me, the larger percentage is through your automobile registration fee, which is basically your license plate.

- Your license plates and... - And that's based on, that's specific to the county so it's not like you're sharing that evenly.

So the more populated your county, the more vehicles, the more revenue that typically comes in to your county based on the license plates.

- Now, in certain areas you have authorities that are above you.

You have to deal with the community standards of each county, the county commissioners or the county council set some of the standards.

And so do you have to continually be in communication with the commissioners and, of course, the state legislature, too.

- So there is, our office deals with all branches of government, at all different levels from, you know, we work with our state legislature to, you know, to look at different laws that could enable us to do our jobs more efficiently.

- And imrpove the— - Yeah.

So a few years ago there was a bill that was passed into law that increased what's called force accounts.

And force account is using county employees, my employees to do work.

Because it is capped at a certain dollar threshold, so anything over that dollar threshold we have to put out for public bid.

And... so we were, it was capped at a pretty low dollar amount that I couldn't replace anything more than, like a small culvert.

And here about three years ago, they increased the force account limit, now I can use county forces to more efficiently and more economically replace small bridges, do a little bit more paving, it's just something that is a tool in our toolbox that we can save some taxpayer dollars by using our own forces to do that type of work.

- I mentioned earlier about you would have to with your staff and maybe other input look at the viability of projects and how long projects might take and timelines.

So, typically, let's say you need to improve a bridge or, you know, improve a road.

How long in advance do you and your staff have to work to get that ready?

- So just for a little bit background.

Under Ohio law, Ohio is a little bit different in a number of areas.

One of them being that we're required to inspect each of our bridges annually every year and in Ohio, a bridge is considered anything with a clear span of ten foot or more.

So that could be two 48 inch round pipes with, you know, two foot in between them.

That is considered a bridge in in Ohio.

And the bridges on the county in the township roads are my responsibility to inspect annually.

And so we're looking at those every year.

And there is a, a rating scale that you give an appraisal number.

And so we are every year looking at what are our, our infrastructure, what can condition it's in and we're applying for funding.

It may be five, six years out that we're applying for funding based on current conditions so that we have funding coming in when, you know, the structure is at the end of service life.

So, you know, we're looking at a five year pavement plan so we're looking at in Medina County we have just under 325 miles of county road that we're responsible for maintaining and resurfacing.

So we'll go out and we have a five year plan of roads that we're evaluating that we're trying to assign a year for reconstruction on.

And a lot of it is based on what type of funding we may get, grants from the state or from the federal government.

So the timeline can be pretty wide and varied if we're doing with local funds, it may be something that we'll do next year.

- Our topic is the role of the county engineer.

We've been listening to Andy Conrad, who is the Medina County engineer, one of the counties in our Western Reserve, Northeast Ohio region.

And I'm your host, Bill Bill Steven Saus.

This is Forum 360.

And again, we're talking about the role of the county engineer working within the government.

Again, Andy Conrad, you're both a professional engineer, civil engineer and a professional surveyor.

And this is a requirement, correct?

- In Ohio.

- In Ohio.

- In Ohio, like I mentioned previously, we're a little bit unique.

We're the only state that requires you to be a land surveyor in addition to being the professional engineer.

And we're the only state that the position of county engineer is elected.

So that is somewhat unique to Ohio.

- Now overseeing surveying operations.

That's usually the beginning of changing, in areas for zoning and various things and roads and bridges.

So, overseeing is surveying operation, what do you have— Who do you deal with?

- So, we deal with a lot of different facets for surveying from, the one of the remaining functions from the original county surveyor position is the county engineer is the, by statute, is the county tax map draftsman.

So we're responsible for maintaining the tax maps, which is what the auditor, the county auditor uses to assess taxes.

So if you look online, my tax map office, we have a electronic representation of the tax maps there that you can see your parcel lines, your property lines.

So we deal with the county auditor, the county treasurer, we have conveyance standards that we review land surveys for accuracy.

We look at the deeds to make sure that they're clearly defining what property they're transferring.

So we're dealing with townships and zoning issues.

So, the county planning department, there's just a lot of different agencies that are involved with that end of things.

- And Andy, when your crews go out to do a surveying to get a project started, how many?

Well, typically how many men or women go out and do those type of jobs?

- We run at our office, we have a two person survey group, typically.

We have modern equipment, we have GPS, and we have different things available to us.

And it depends on what the job is.

Sometimes we're surveying the center line of the roadway to establish boundaries.

Sometimes we're doing what's a cross section, which is getting an elevation and topo of the center line of the road, the edge of pavement, the shoulder, the ditches for say, a bridge replacement.

You have to know what the existing conditions are so you can design the bridge replacement.

We may be doing an outlet profile of a culvert.

So do we need to, if it's plugged up or not draining real well and, you know, can we drain it within the road right away, or do we need to talk to a downstream property owner about getting a work agreement to maybe do some grading on their properties so the culverts function correctly.

So we may have to do some topographic work to see the elevations on a township project.

One of the roles of the county engineers, we provide the engineering— We're the engineer of record for these 17 townships in Medina County.

So if they have a project where they're doing a road project or a culvert project or even a parking lot project, we generally provide those services for them, because we're their engineer.

- And that's typical of all of our counties in the Western Reserve area of northeast Ohio.

We also oversee these projects and in advance, you talked about such, let's say, road projects.

You have to worry about traffic safety.

You have to worry about detouring.

So there's some of the things you have to think ahead.

How do you set up the roads and, you know, in advance to make sure people are aware that there's going to be a detour?

People are going to have to change their traffic plans.

- And this is something that we work really hard at.

and sometimes the motoring public sees us maybe not doing as good of a job as they think if we're trying to coordinate, you know, multiple— You know, we have a project that we've been planning for five years and we have it bid out to a contractor and they have a schedule and then all of a sudden, we have that detour set up, and maybe there's an emergency where there's a culvert on a state route that needs to replace and they have to close their road.

And that was part of our detour or, just last week, we actually had emergency closure of a railroad where we were working on a nearby road and our original detour was down through that railroad crossing.

So we had to, you know, scramble to reevaluate where we’re going to move traffic to.

And I'm sure the motoring public wasn't real happy, but you know, emergencies do happen and we do put up, you know, we try to put up advanced warning signs, you know, a week or so in advance and then give people the detour route.

And, for the most part, locals understand how to get around if they're from the area, they can very easily navigate that.

It's a lot of the out of town folks that are a little bit more dependent on the the detour routes.

- And you see here in Summit County, your colleagues here, the orange barrels, there are probably more orange barrels in this county, or maybe Cuyahoga County, because of the multiple roads and highways and bridges that are being worked on.

So, it does cause delays and do you have to let the media know, let the newspapers know, let the radio and television stations know let's be planned, you know, put the news out.

- Yeah.

So we go through and whenever we're going to do a road closing, we get a, the board of county commissioners to pass a resolution authorizing the closure.

And then, that is the closures are published in the local newspaper.

We try to put them up on the website as well.

So we try to get the information out and then, like you said, the advance warning signs a week or so in advance to help give people that are so they're not surprised on their way to work the first Monday morning.

- Now I know in many Western Reserve, northeast Ohio counties, we see a lot of road projects where they're looking for better safety measures.

So we're seeing more roundabouts.

And I know to the northern part of Medina County eastern part, I see more there and even in the Medina area and Summit County, heading down toward Stark County and everywhere I see roundabouts.

Tell us how that feature started to come into play.

- So roundabouts have been around, no pun intended.

Therefore, for a long time over in Europe and they— - In Europe.

- And they started coming over to the U.S.

a while.

But here in Medina County, our first one went in York Township.

It was an ODOT led project.

And the roundabouts are a really good tool where you're having high speed crashes.

Typically they're replacing an intersection that may be a two way stop with lots of traffic and people sometimes get impatient, or they think there's a bigger gap in the traffic and they pull out and they misjudge it and can have some pretty serious crashes.

The roundabouts give the opportunity for people to merge into traffic.

It doesn't eliminate crashes, but it eliminates the high speed aspect.

So we do get a number of fender benders where people aren't sure if I should go or I shouldn’t go.

But if you're doing that at 20 miles an hour as compared to 55, you're not seeing fatalities in the roundabouts or permanent injury type crashes.

- Well, that's an interesting concept is the speed, when you were doing a road and planning a road, maybe shifting some curve or something.

How are the speed limits set?

And we typically see 55, 45, 35, 25.

So how do you, as an engineer and, you know, your department, each county engineer has to figure out what is safe for that area.

- So there is a very specific set of criteria for setting speed limits.

You have to perform a speed study and one of the things that is a great misnomer is we get residents that call us all the time and say, hey, I want you to lower the speed limit on my road.

Well, I can do the speed study, but I have to submit it to the Department of Transportation.

Because ODOT is the one that actually authorizes a speed reduction on a route.

So I can do a speed study, but it has to be approved at the state level.

And it's based on a number of criteria as far as the prevailing speed, how developed area, number of driveways, the vertical alignment.

There's a number of factors that go into it.

And so we collect all that data and you can use a spreadsheet to see what the speed limit should be and then we can submit that down to ODOT to see if we can get it generalized, and get a speed— - And then of course, the Ohio Highway Patrol and the State Patrol and the county sheriffs and the township police and the city police have to— - Enforce it.

- Enforce it.

And sometimes they will give you feedback.

Now we're talking with, we only have a minute or two left, but Andy Conrad is our guest.

We're talking about the role of the county engineers.

As far as a county government, it's probably one of the most active, the department.

Again, quickly, we have a minute.

What are the— You talked about tax maps, highway.

What are the all the different departments that you oversee that are typical for county engineer.

- So, probably one of the bigger things is engineering.

So we're planning maintenance and new construction projects.

- Okay.

- We're also doing maintenance on the like I said, the, all the roadways that we have.

And that includes the snow and ice removal, vegetative control.

You'll see us out roadside mowing throughout the summer months.

- So highway maintenance.

- Yeah.

And, you know, highway maintenance as far as striping the roads, you know, just anything within that, the road right away that's happening typically that's either being done by our county forces or by a contractor that we're involved with.

- Very good.

Well, we have learned a lot about the role of the county engineers.

Check.

People can check with their own counties in the Western Reserve area here in northeast Ohio.

As Andy mentioned, we have an association of county engineers of Ohio, and he's active in that.

So contact your local county engineers if you have any questions.

And I want to thank you for being a part of our Forum 360 to let the public and northeast Ohio know what a county engineer does.

Thank you so much.

- I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

- You're welcome.

Forum 360 is brought to you by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 supporters.