Great River grows nearly tenfold in five years

King Coltrin, Spencer Jones and Mel Eakins aren't far from where they grew up. The three senior engineer partners with Great River Engineering in Springfield attended school together at the University of Missouri-Rolla and are from southwest Missouri.

After college, the three engineers went their separate ways for a while. Jones, a Republic native, worked for a large Kansas City-based engineering firm where he focused on the design of bridges throughout Missouri. After moving to Springfield, he went to work for a local civil engineering consulting firm.

Coltrin, originally from Buffalo, designed highways and performed traffic studies for the Missouri Department of Transportation. In addition, he worked for local engineering consulting firms designing road and other civil engineering projects. Coltrin also worked for the city of Springfield's public work's department as associate engineer.

Eakins, a Springfield native, worked for an international engineering firm based in Chicago working on navigation projects across the United States and abroad. He moved back to Springfield and went to work for a civil engineering consulting firm.

Five years ago, Jones and Coltrin decided to form their own company.

"After working in the engineering field for a variety of companies, we collectively believed that a higher level of service, client care and quality of work could be provided to local cities, counties and developers," said Jones. "Our approach has been to collect the area's most talented civil engineers, surveyors and designers into a team that recognizes the importance of service and sound engineering."

Eakins joined the two partners in 2000, and Great River Engineering has completed about 1200 projects to date. The company has grown from two employees in 1997 to 19.

Great River Engineering offers a variety of services to its clients list that include cities, counties, federal and state agencies and private industry. The company's expertise includes planning, engineering and construction management for large and small projects.

Great River's staff is comprised of registered engineers, engineering technicians, surveyors and support staff.

The company is registered in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Texas and Arkansas.

One of Great River's current projects involves the redesign of Valley Water Mill Road north of Springfield. "We're doing some vertical line changes on Valley Water Mill to improve safety and capacity," said Jones.

Specefic improvements include widening the existing road, improving the vertical alignment, replacing two box culverts and making geometric improvements to an intersection. Construction is set to begin this fall.

The Valley Water Mill project is one of Jones' favorite projects. "We're changing the shape of the road to make it safer for traffic," he said.

The company also is working on a bridge project over the Meramec River and on bridges in Polk and Christian counties. Engineers at Great River have designed nearly 100 bridges in the last decade.

The company is working on a commercial development in Ozark and is working on several different site-development projects for apartment complexes.

"I think the reason that we've seen the growth that we have and the reason that we've developed a client base that we have is because we try to provide a high level of service to our clients to help them meet their objectives. That's why we have seen the growth because we've been very committed to that," Jones said. "We have a lot of respect for our name and what we do even if it's the paper products that we put out drawings that we put out we want them to represent our company well, and our client."

Great River strives to work with the existing environment on its projects.

"We do try when we do a project to look at the site see what's available and work with what the site presents you as far as whether it's woods or streams or whatever try to leave as much of nature intact as we can," Coltrin said.

Kevin Lowe, P.E., administrator of the Greene County Highway Department, has worked with Great River on several projects.

"I can tell you they do a lot of things to keep erosion down," Lowe said. "They really put a lot of effort into that, which is really nice to see."

According to Lowe, employees at Great River are "super people to work with, very flexible and adaptable and available." They went with county Highway Department employees one night to meet property owners, he said.

The three partners at Great River Engineering get a huge sense of satisfaction from their job.

"We get to see something from the raw material all the way through to the finished product," said Coltrin. "We get to work on the designer's aspect dealing with design details and then actually seeing that completed."