Stephen Fein: Congratulations guys on your quarter. You mentioned the new agreement with the labor union. Do you expect the labor union to provide any political support in your efforts in Hanford?
Mark Duff: There’s an obvious political connection with a union like that. 598 has got a very large group of constituents in the Central Washington area. They have a beautiful facility with enormous training capacity and they’re very politically connected. So I would — there is a certain amount of ability to access different figures and managers in the area. We certainly have not entered into this agreement with that as our focus. We sincerely entered into the agreement because we really believe that their provision of labor with the training facility they’ve got and the tradition they have for running safe workers would give us the stability we need to ebb and flow with these large DOE waste contracts. So while there may be some political advantages to that, particularly associated with this administration, our objective really was to be able to provide that stability as the grouting starts as well as some of the DFLAW work that’s also going to be coming up and making sure that we’ve got the people we need in a small town, the town of 250,000 to make sure we’ve got the people that we need to meet the obligations we’re going to have.
Stephen Fein: Okay, all right. So that was my next question because you did mention in your presentation initially that you’re experiencing labor shortages. So am I correct that that would help the any labor shortage problem out in Hanford, being connected with that union?
Mark Duff: Absolutely, that’s exactly right. And we are having — we’re all struggling. I think Gold Town is because there’s just not that many people. Hanford hired a lot of people and taken a lot of people from us because their benefits package is better and they’re more competitive in regards to compensation than we are. We’re commercial, so we have to compete with people. They don’t have to. And it’s a different environment. We have been able to replace people. But with the numbers we’re talking — the levels of the numbers we’re talking about for these 2 projects — the DFLAW and the TBI type of work, we’re talking a couple of hundred people at max. And, boy, having the 598 working with us gives us confidence that we can meet these obligations.
Stephen Fein: How are you dealing — if this is — if labor shortage is consistent nationally and internationally, how are you dealing with that?
Mark Duff: We’ve had a few issues at the other 2 plants but not quite to the extent we had at Hanford. We have had some issues with folks, just like everyone else in the country is having with labor. And we’ve been able to find folks. We had increased our rates or salaries, we’ve tuned in the margins a little bit because of that. And our rates will catch up to it in regards to what we charge. But we’ve been able to find people. We’re almost fully staffed and we maybe have 5% to 10% availability or openings at the labor level at each site. But Hanford far and away has been the biggest impact because of the Hanford facility versus the original facility because of Hanford. The ones at Oak Ridge, to a lesser degree and the ones in Gainesville have even less. So we’ve been able to deal with it. But it has had an impact and we’ve been fortunately being able to manage it.
Stephen Fein: Has your productivity been impacted by climate change?
Mark Duff: Our productivity has not been impacted by climate change at all that I can think of. Our productivity has been impacted only really by the labor issues we just discussed but not by the heat that I’m aware of.
Stephen Fein: Okay. If you were to build a plant in Great Britain with Westinghouse, how long would you expect that would take to build that plant?
Mark Duff: Right now, we’re estimating — we’ve been working on design with Westinghouse at a very slow progression because we’re waiting to hear about this award. But with where we are right now on permitting and design, we’re looking at best about 18 months from the award date to 24 months but probably some place in between. But the current schedule is 18 months to answer your question.
Stephen Fein: With regard to Hanford and the opening of the vitrification plant, would the secondary was just come to you? Or would you have to be permitted or whatever?
