By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
The City of Great Bend has used an on-call engineering service since 2016. Professional Engineering Consultants (PEC) from Wichita provided engineering work to the city until the beginning of the year. Because of a legal case, involving both the City of Great Bend and PEC, the city parted ways with PEC and received bids for a new engineering services.
The Great Bend City Council voted in favor of hiring JEO Consulting, and Assistant City Administrator Logan Burns was pleased with the added capabilities of JEO.
"If we didn't have the full circle of it, we would have to contract more, which is only going to cost us more money," said Burns. "Compared to our last on-call engineer, JEO will be available to provide a lot more services. We'll be able to look into a few more. Just at that point, it's a no-brainer."
The city received four proposals, with two firms meeting the city’s criteria. City Administrator Brandon Anderson said JEO Consulting was the lowest in price and will cost the city $900 in a monthly retainer fee, plus additional costs for specific projects.
"JEO is trying to be aggressive in this part of the world, and increase the cities that they work for," said Anderson. "The fit seemed very good. Obviously, we won't know until we get into it but we feel comfortable. We need this service."
The City of Hutchinson and South Hutchinson make use of JEO. The contract with the engineering firm will be for two years and will be reviewed after that period.