A recently completed expansion project at Pearson Government Solutions will add 250 more jobs at its Lawrence call center than originally anticipated.

Pearson officials confirmed their hiring plans Thursday at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the company’s 45,000-square-foot expansion at its East Hills Business Park offices.

The company, formerly known as NCS Pearson, started the project in November and said at the time it would add 150 jobs. Pearson handles a variety of call center contracts, primarily for government agencies.

Terry Kroshus, director of the Lawrence call center operations, said the company had hired 170 employees to staff the new offices and would hire another 230 employees in the next three to six months.

“We’re in the process of adding a lot of jobs out here because we had several projects grow more than we even expected,” Kroshus said.

Kroshus said the new jobs would be a mix of about 50 percent full-time employees and 50 percent temporary or part-time workers. He said the average wage for the positions would be in the $8- to $10-an-hour range, plus benefits.

The expansion is spurred by several new government contracts the company received in the past year. The largest is a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to run a telephone help line answering questions about Medicare and Medicaid programs. In the past 12 months, the company also won contracts to answer telephone calls regarding U.S. immigration and naturalization processes, and calls involving people interested in applying for newly mandated airport security jobs.

“Those three contracts were just huge wins for us,” Kroshus said.

Terry Kroshus, call center director at Pearson Government Solutions, explains the company's expansion project in the East Hills Business Park. Pearson has landed contracts with the federal government that will allow it to increase its Lawrence work force by another 250 people before the year is out.

When Pearson completes its hiring this year, the company’s Lawrence operations will have approximately 1,400 employees, making it the third-largest employer in the city, trailing only Kansas University and the Lawrence school district.

The 45,000 square feet of new office and call center space is the second major expansion since the company built its East Hills facility in 1997. The company added 60,000 square feet of office space in 2000 and now has 195,000 square feet of space in the business park.

Mac Curtis, company president and CEO, said Pearson had made Lawrence a target for frequent expansion primarily because it liked the quality of the work force.

“This is a showcase facility for our company,” Curtis said. “We say if we can get a potential customer to come to Kansas and see our facility here and our people here, the chances of us winning that contract go up exponentially.”

Kroshus said being close to area universities was a major drawing point for Pearson. He said 58 percent of call center employees had some level of college education.

“That’s important because when you are serving government agencies, they want to make sure you have dependable, highly educated people doing the job,” Kroshus said.

Pearson partnered with Douglas County Development Inc., the nonprofit group that manages the East Hills Business Park, for the expansion. Lynn Parman, vice president of economic development for the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said DCDI actually was the owner of the building.