Jim Bills is 2012 Employee of the Year
Jim Bills, AIMS coordinator, Business Operations and Planning Division, was named JCW's 2012 Employee of the Year during the department's employee recognition luncheon on Dec. 19.
It was Jim Bills' creativity and strong commitment to customer service that made the difference when a street-storm project between the cities of Leawood and Prairie Village was being designed near the intersection of 87th and Mission Road.
The project was to replace the existing box culvert and expand it substantially to better accommodate peak storm flows. In that location, both the Dykes Branch Pump Station dry weather and storm force mains were located under the existing box culvert, but locations of the force mains had always been very difficult to confirm. Both cities were concerned about getting accurate information regarding the force main since the project would close Mission Road in that location for several weeks. It was a high priority for both cities to minimize the time that Mission Road would be closed.
In order to provide the best information to the cities, Jim took a considerable amount of time to correlate the minimal information that we did have on record, drawings along with GIS data, to locate the force mains. He then helped mark the locations in the field where vacuum excavation was completed to locate the force mains. Without his efforts, it is quite possible that the vacuum excavating of potholes could have taken up to a week rather than the day and a half of work required to provide the critical information to the cities.
Jim was the department's second quarter STARS winner. Others considered for the Employee of the Year Award were Tony Hall, IT analyst and Lonnie Ponder, senior inspector. They were the departments first and third quarter STARS winners, respectively.
The selection committee composed of Penny Postoak Ferguson, deputy county manager; Tiffany Hentcshel, human resources manager; and Alice Amrein, transit director, thoroughly reviewed each of the three winning applications, weighed all of the attributes of each candidate and determined which one best exemplified the values of JCW, which is the focus of the STARS program.
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