KTU & A Planning and Landscape Architecture

Apr 15th, 2023

My wife and I met with Kurt and Cheri early on in the process and advised them of the size project, budget constraints and features we would like integrated to the design. Kurt quoted us and we engaged in their services. Several months after the engagement started it was obvious the hourly time spent on the project would not meet the budget for the project. To be fair, some of that was due to minor changes and tweaks we made, but as a much larger dynamic we felt the KTUA process and billing policy was inefficient. As a whole, we feel the KTUA process is not accountable to their quoted estimate. We did not feel any urgency on their part to stick to their estimate. There were simple oversights and missing details that required our call out to fix. These simple edits that although take minutes to correct, should have been spotted and provided correctly the first time. KTUA then bills us for these corrections. Even more chaffing, is that these edits were rounded to the nearest hour by KTUA. As you can imagine even a handful of changes could cost significantly more due to this policy. When looking at the KTUA monthly invoice, it lacks any real detail, it simply indicates time worked and who worked, it does not detail what was worked on. We stopped the project and held off on making some of the payments to better understand why the price inflated so dramatically. To bridge this disagreement my conversations with Kurt consisted of paying all previous invoices in exchange for finalizing the plans so we can start to build. Kurt responded back "yes, they will complete the work to issue a permit." I made whole on the payments, but Kurt did not divulge a separate permit needed for construction start, would not be included. Cost to complete the final permit would be a hefty 30% more. Kurt did not counter my expectation in the few conversations we had before payment was made. I felt deceived. All in all, I estimated receiving 72% of the services detailed in the original contract and paid or quoted 30% more than the original budget. I still give 2 stars because throughout this process Kurt returned my calls. However I feel taken advantage of, and cannot recommend.
Mar 6th, 2022

Jun 28th, 2021

Tom Bertulis is one of the greatest and most respected transportation engineer in the county. He is an expert in active transportation and served on many notable committees such as the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Devices (NCUTCD). He is a valuable employee to KTU&A in bridging the gap for transformative projects in place making and livability. High praise Tom Bertulis!
May 14th, 2021

#HighPraiseTomB
Nov 18th, 2020