Back

Original Story by Carrie Rengers, The Wichita Eagle April 27, 2023

Overland Park firm is expanding in Wichita in two big ways.

An Overland Park firm is expanding in Wichita in a couple of big ways.

Brungardt Honomichl & Co., a civil engineering firm that is going into its 31st year, entered the Wichita market a year ago with one employee.

“We’ve grown quite a bit,” said Matthew Tucker, a lifelong Wichitan who is BHC’s Wichita regional manager.

The firm quickly grew to six employees and now has acquired the Savoy Co. for an additional 15 employees across Savoy’s Wichita, El Dorado and Kensington offices.

“We are still expecting to grow even more by the end of the year,” said Teresa Hinrichs-Perrin, BHC’s corporate growth and strategy director.

BHC, which has been in space at the FireWorx co-working building downtown, is temporarily moving into Savoy’s Wichita space at 433 S. Hydraulic on its way to getting its own new space at Occidental Management’s Ice House at 165 S. Rock Island Ave.

Alloy Architecture, which will be BHC’s neighbor in the Ice House, is designing the firm’s new space.

BHC, which also has an office in Kansas City, Kan., now has 175 employees across all of its offices.

Tucker said the firm considered a few places when it looked at expanding. It already had customers here and had been doing business with them for some time, “so Wichita was natural.”

Hinrichs-Perrin said the firm does work across the country and had options of where to grow.

She said one plus in Wichita’s favor is that Wichita State University is here, which “just gives a talent and vibrancy to the market.”

Hinrichs-Perrin said that locating downtown makes sense for BHC because the company likes to be involved in the communities in which it locates.

“It seems like to us that’s where a lot of things start,” she said. “This gave us . . . a core.”

Also, she said it will be nice for employees to be able to walk to lunch.

Tucker said BHC got involved with community and trade organizations immediately upon entering Wichita.

“We jumped right on that,” he said. “You’ve got to be active and involved to stay relevant.”

Occidental president Chad Stafford and broker Nick Flores handled the deal for the BHC space.

The move will happen by late summer if not a bit earlier, Tucker said.

“I can’t wait to move in over there.”