Andy Wittmann: I just thought maybe I’d ask about some of the other external factors, Jule, that you’d cited previously and kind of get your updated thoughts on these, and specifically regarding labor, its availability. Are you able to keep the man hours that you need and the rate per hour as expected? And maybe some of the other things like some of the trucking costs, I know we’re — for a while there were getting kind of tight. So I thought maybe have you address those.
Jule Smith: On the labor markets, I would say it’s gotten a lot better since the summer of 2021 when that really was some of the ankle weights we talked about. I think part of it getting better is the housing market as it does slow down a little bit, it eats a lot of labor up. Part of it is more people are coming back to work after COVID. And part of it is, I told you, we would adjust to make sure that we had the labor we did. So we put a lot of programs in place that are working. We offer great benefits, a great pay, and then we try to create a career path for all these employees. And so I think all of that’s working together. So I really don’t hear a lot about labor now. I think we’re doing a good job staffing our crews, that’s really not an impact.
Old trucking costs, part of the labor thing is I think truck drivers are not quite as hard to get as they were back when you just — a year ago, it was very difficult to get truck drivers, and so that’s helpful. But I do think — you asked about trucking costs. I think it’s important. We don’t anticipate construction inflation moderating to normal quickly. You read in the newspapers about inflation moderating, but construction inflation, I think, is at a different scale and on different timing. And I think with the amount of money flowing through for infrastructure, we are certainly not letting our guard down on getting inflation in our bids and making sure we pass that along. And I think it will be elevated more than the top line CPI number.
So that’s the color I would have around inflation.
Andy Wittmann: And then, I guess, just kind of my final question dovetails on that last one a little bit, which was on these acquisitions, and one of them is one in North Carolina, obviously, a larger platform. I guess I was hoping maybe, Alan, first, if you could comment on how much backlog was acquired or maybe guidepost you want to give us on how much revenue you expect? But maybe as important or maybe more important, with the dynamic inflationary environments and the challenges about getting margin, can you talk about how well you’re able to scrub that backlog and the confidence that you have, and if the newly acquired backlog and its ability to deliver product margins in line or above kind of what CPI would have done on its own?
Alan Palmer: I mean, as far as the backlog, I think Jule in his comments stated that it was a very strong backlog, both in North Carolina with platform acquisition and in Tennessee. So we were very pleased with that. And then the bid opportunities in both of those markets, as you can imagine, are extremely good, even post acquisition. So the total backlog from both of them was in the range of about $70 million. And we’re in there evaluating that backlog. But what we’re seeing is it’s a good healthy backlog. We don’t see it having — of course, just a dollar amount, it’s not going to have a significant impact on our overall margin. But we don’t see it being anything — a lot of problems that we’ve got to work through. Fortunately, they were kind of in the same place that we were in bidding that work.
