Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from Graham Madison - Lazard Capital Market.
Graham Madison - Lazard Capital Market
I wondered if you could just sort of comment, you talked about activity levels and bid activity improvement, could you compare this to sort of the level that you saw the company last year at this time or even two years ago at this time?
Bill Coskey
Well, the best way we can look at that really is through billable man hours and I would say in the second and third quarters of the last year our billable man hours were running $230,000 and $240,000 for biweekly periods. And probably our most latest number is around a $180,000. So by that measure we are still roughly down about 25% from our best levels of last year.
Graham Madison - Lazard Capital Market
So then looking back sort of two years ago or the early part of the cycle, how could we compare that?
Bill Coskey
Well, we are pretty much a growing company up through about the third quarter of last year, 2008. And so, I haven’t looked up far back, but I would say the levels we have now are comparable to ones we were showing maybe in 2007 or something like that.
Graham Madison - Lazard Capital Market
Then in terms of, looking at your land group, could you just give a little bit more color in terms of what you are seeing there? I mean, obviously the pipeline market seems to be picking up, are you still adding people in that division and is there room for a potential market expansion?
Bill Coskey
Yes Graham, in the last month we have added about 17 people for our land group. Primarily we are going to be doing some land acquisition work on a pipeline project that runs out of the Haynesville to that ridge, a fairly large diameter line, and we are doing a portion of that line. I think 30% or 40% of the link to that line will be acquiring right away, and so pipeline activities mainly being driven by the shale employees, Haynesville Marcellus, the Balkan, Rocky Mountains.
We are starting to see a bigger piece of our land business involved in electric transmission lines and I believe has grown to maybe even be about a third of that business right now being involved in electric power transmission about two third’s pipeline.
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