Franklin upgrades project manager job, hires assistant city engineer

The city of Franklin has hired an assistant city engineer.

Mark Richards, Franklin city engineer, introduced Matt McElroy as the new assistant city engineer during the city council and board of public works meetings Wednesday.

McElroy has 15 years of experience and previously worked as a project engineer at CrossRoad Engineers. He acted as the inspector for the East and West Court Street project in 2012 and was involved in the design of several of the city’s roundabouts.

“He’s already hit the ground running,” Richards said. “One of the first projects I gave him was the EV charger project and to complete the application to submit to Duke Energy for the EV charger setup. He got it done in probably 20 minutes from when I handed it off to him.”

McElroy started the position on Jan. 16 and expressed his appreciation and his excitement to work with city officials.

“He has an extensive background in road design and utility coordination,” Richards said. “The hope is that some of these smaller projects that we have to hand off to consultants for design work, Matt will be able to help do those internally so we can save some costs there.”

The assistant city engineer is a reimagining of the city’s project manager position. The role was reclassified because state law requires that if you have engineer in your title, you are licensed as an engineer in the state of Indiana, Richards said.

The last two people who held the project manager position both had engineering degrees but did not have engineering licenses. The idea was to hire someone highly qualified and able to help complete more tasks that require an engineering license in house, Richards said.