Reed City Water System Named 2026 APWA Project of the Year

When the Michigan Chapter of the American Public Works Association announced its 2026 Project of the Year awards, a project right here in Reed City took home the top honor in the Quality of Life category for projects between $5 million and $25 million. Gerber Construction Co. is honored to have served as the primary contractor on Restoring the "Heart" of Reed City's Water System — a $13 million, multi-phase overhaul of the infrastructure that quite literally keeps our community running.

For a 65-year-old family-owned company headquartered just down the road, this one hit close to home. Reed City isn't a job site to us. It's where our families live, where our kids go to school, and where our neighbors turn on the tap every morning expecting clean, reliable water. Being trusted to rebuild the backbone of that system — and then seeing the work recognized at the state level — is the kind of honor that doesn't come around often.

What the project actually did

Reed City's water system had been showing its age for years. Undersized watermains, obsolete municipal wells, deteriorating service lines, aging meters, and a water storage tank past its prime had all started to threaten the reliability of a system that the entire community — and the regional economy — depends on. Working alongside the City of Reed City and engineering firm Fleis & VandenBrink, Gerber helped deliver a comprehensive rebuild that included:

• Replacing or installing 10,500 feet of watermain
• Replacing approximately 450 lead service lines
• Constructing a new well, well house, and well site
• Installing a new submersible well
• Demolishing two obsolete city wells
• Consolidating a nearby water supply
• System-wide water meter replacement affecting roughly 950 customers
• Rehabilitating the existing water storage tank

Why "the heart" matters

The project's name isn't just a metaphor. Reed City sits at the crossroads of US-131 and US-10 and serves as a regional economic hub for central Michigan. It's also home to one of only two Yoplait yogurt plants serving North America — a 24/7 operation that employs around 450 people, processes roughly one million pounds of milk every day from dairy farms within a 60-to-70-mile radius, and uses more than half of the city's water supply. Any disruption to that system ripples outward fast: to farmers, truck drivers, plant workers, and hundreds of families who depend on that paycheck.

That's the part of this work the award category gets right. "Quality of life" sounds abstract until you realize it means a yogurt plant stays running, a dairy farmer keeps his contract, a family keeps their health insurance, and a kid in Reed City can drink water from the tap without worrying about lead. Infrastructure is invisible when it works — and that's exactly the goal.

Building around a plant that never stops

One of the most demanding parts of the project came when Gerber's crews had to tie four new water service lines into the Yoplait facility. Because the plant never shuts down except for a brief annual maintenance window each fall, the team had exactly three days to make each connection — with no possibility of rescheduling. To make that window work, roughly 95% of the prep — installing the new watermain in the right-of-way, pressure testing, regulatory approvals — had to be completed in advance. When the shutdown window opened, everything had to go right the first time. It did.

That kind of execution doesn't happen by accident. It comes from careful sequencing, tight coordination with plant leadership, and crews who understand that downtime in a facility like Yoplait isn't measured in hours — it's measured in trucks waiting at the dock and milk that has nowhere to go.

Three years, zero injuries

The project ran for more than three years across eight separate construction contracts. Across all of that work — trenching, well drilling, watermain installation, lead service line replacement, traffic control on active state routes — the team didn't record a single bodily injury or property damage claim. That's not luck. It's the result of consistent toolbox talks, OSHA-compliant trenching practices, traffic control coordinated with MDOT, and a culture where every crew member is expected to look out for the next one.

Credit for that record — and for the project's overall execution — goes to the Gerber team on the ground. Justin Erbes served as Lead Project Manager, with Kitt Jarzabkowski as Project Manager, supported by the superintendents, operators, laborers, and office staff who showed up day after day for three years to get this right.

A neighborhood gets clean municipal water

Beyond the headline numbers, the project also brought the White Birch Estates neighborhood — more than 50 households previously on a private well system — onto the city's municipal water supply for the first time. For those residents, it means better water quality, better reliability, and one less thing to maintain on their own property.

The team that made it happen

This award belongs to a partnership. The City of Reed City led the vision and secured the financing through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund — including a 100% grant for FY2023 and a 50% grant / 50% low-interest loan for FY2024 — that made the work affordable for a small community. Fleis & VandenBrink served as engineer of record, handling design, permitting, and construction engineering. And Gerber Construction is proud to have been the contractor on the ground turning those plans into pipes, wells, pavement, and a system that's ready for the next generation.

We'll be celebrating the award alongside the City and F&V at the APWA Michigan Chapter Annual Conference at Boyne Mountain Resort on May 21, 2026.