A member of Webster County’s engineering staff has been promoted to assistant county engineer, filling a vacancy that was created by the hiring of a new county engineer.

Ryan Weidemann, who is currently an assistant engineer with the Webster County engineer’s office, will become assistant county engineer effective July 1.

His starting salary will be $97,682.

Weidemann will be the assistant to Jamie Johll, who became county engineer following the retirement of Randy Will at the end of May.

Johll had previously been assistant county engineer.

Weidemann has been with the county engineer’s office since December 2008, starting off as assistant to the county engineer before eventually becoming an assistant engineer.

His responsibilities over the years have included land surveying and inspecting ongoing county construction projects.

Projects he’s worked on include the 2015 repair of Webster County road P63 between Webster County roads D14 and D20. Weidemann also contributed to the reconstruction of the intersection of Webster County roads P59 and C56 in Badger around 2015.

A Dows native, Weidemann graduated from Northeast Hamilton High School. He earned an associate’s degree from Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls. He later enrolled in Iowa State University in Ames, where he initially studied mechanical engineering.

He told The Messenger in 2015 that he switched to civil engineering because it is “so much more hands-on than mechanical engineering.”