Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Unspecified Analyst – Sidoti & Company
Unspecified Analyst – Sidoti & Company
You mentioned the projects in Western Canada had wrapped up, did many of those workers fall off the tally during the quarter?
Philip Hawk
Yes, during the quarter it was kind of winding down toward the end of the quarter. But again, many also significant portion of them, moved on or rotated to the maintenance activity as that unit really fired up. We have the ongoing maintenance work there.
What’s happened with the extraordinary, there are also a very large number of additional projects on the books in the oil sands, but nearly all of those have been put into a pause mode or a defer mode due to the extraordinary drop in crude oil prices.
Unspecified Analyst – Sidoti & Company
Are you still aiming to add 100 new techs per quarter on average or rough average, or will a contraction in that minority 15% of your business depends on new construction maybe give you some extra help that would otherwise need to be hired.
Philip Hawk
I think the thing that, what I believe now is from a year ago or the last couple of years, finding and attracting new talent was a real challenge given just the competition for resources. I believe it will be less of an issue for us to do that. One we’ve demonstrated our ability to do it but secondly I think our environment is such that we’re going to have a lot more options with regard to personnel additions then we’ve had in the last few years just given the headwinds of the business and I think kind of less related activity not just in our space but in the related spaces where we might have competition for personnel.
So what we will be doing is adding personnel in conjunction with our expectations of a revenue activity so that we keep our utilization levels high. Now having said all that, will we add about 100 personnel per quarter? I think that’s a reasonable expectation assumption. As you see with like 83 for the quarter and that was net by the way of some declines in Canada by the end of the quarter due to the wrapping up of projects, so I think that’s a reasonable expectation but we don’t have a hard and fast rule that it has to be 100. We’re trying to balance it with our activity levels.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
