\>\> Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management presents live from the BLM
national Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Sherpa for Reclamation
Bonds, a two‑day course intended to help you apply your knowledge and
skills in mine reclamation, to produce a reclamation bond cost estimate.
And now the host of your program, Matt Shumaker.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Good morning. Welcome to our satellite training course
using Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds. In this program, we\'ll be
demonstrating the program for you and using several different examples.
If all went well at your end, you\'ll have Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds
up and running on a computer in front of you. You will be able to follow
along as we work through some of the examples of estimating reclamation
costs. With me this morning to talk about the Sherpa for Reclamation
Bonds program is Scott Stebbins, who is actually the principal creator
of the software. And the main instructor for this course. Good morning,
Scott.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me here.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Also with us is Scott Murrellwright, from the BLM
Washington Office, Division of Solid Minerals. Scott is here to explain
how Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds came to be a BLM suggested program and
also to answer questions that may involve policy. Good morning, Scott.

\>\> S. Murrellwright: Good morning, Matt. It\'s great to be here.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Even with it being 110 outside?

\>\> S. Murrellwright: You know what they say\... It\'s the dry heat.

\>\> M. Shumaker: It is indeed a dry heat. And we may even do a little
dry humor today, which would be horrible. Before we get started, I\'d
like to go over a brief outline of what we\'ll be covering in today\'s
training. Basically this morning we\'ll be working through the basics of
the Sherpa program and dealing with some examples. I also need to
explain a few housekeeping items. To get credit for this class, you\'ll
need to complete the exercise that we will ‑‑ we\'ll discuss this
afternoon. You\'ll have all day Wednesday to work on it and we\'ll have
a way for you to call in and ask questions if you need help. If you\'re
completing this class as a self‑study package, then you\'ll need to
follow the instructions that came with the class. This training is
designed to be interactive. If you have any questions at any time, just
jump in. If your office is equipped with push‑to‑talk, you can just push
the push‑to‑talk button, and as Chip said earlier, you want to
push‑to‑talk, you\'ll want to hold this about, oh, about an arm\'s
length away. Now, this only works for one person at a time. So if two or
more people try to talk with the push‑to‑talk microphone, the sound
won\'t work properly. So if you see me do this, it means, let go of the
push‑to‑talk button and let\'s get things reorganized. You can also call
in using our toll‑free number at 1‑877‑862‑5346. You can also send us a
fax at 602‑906‑5713. Now, if you do send us a fax, it will come right to
this desk. So you don\'t need to use a cover sheet. In fact, the fax
machine is right in front of me here, and it will come straight in and
I\'ll be able to get to your question immediately. You can also fax us a
diagram or ‑‑ actually, it would need to be a simple diagram and we can
put it on the overhead and share it with the rest of the audience. By
the way, according to our records, there are between 70 and 80 people
here at about 20 different locations. So looks like we\'re going to have
a good day, and if you don\'t ask questions, we may just start asking
you questions. So be sure to participate. The programming schedule puts
this class in two blocks of two hours on two separate days. As I
mentioned a moment ago you\'ll have all day Wednesday to work on the
course exercise. Toward the end of the day we\'ll explain how to turn in
the results of the exercise tomorrow. Now that the announcements are out
of the way let\'s get into some things. To start off, we\'ll go to Scott
Murrellwright from headquarters and he\'ll give us some background on
how Sherpa came to be a BLM accepted and suggested program. Scott?

\>\> S. Murrellwright: Thank you, Matt. Hello out there. I guess my
function today is to kind of give you an overview regarding how we got
to Sherpa, how it essentially fits into the 3809 regulations. Let me get
started with that. As we all are aware of, for those who have been with
us for a while, the revised regulations, the 3809s became effective in
2001. At that time the big change was that all notices now require
reclamation bonds. So essentially what the 3809 regulations have done
for us is to increase for many of us our workload in ensuring that we
are doing our job and preventing unnecessary degradation out there on
public lands. So, as it says up on the screen, all notices and plans of
operations now must post financial guarantees in an amount sufficient to
allow BLM to contract with a third party to reclaim the operations
according to 3809.5, 5.2.A. Financial guarantees\... what do we have?
The financial guarantee amount is based on a reclamation cost estimate,
which is based on the reclamation plan, submitted by the operator and
includes BLM\'s administration costs. You can find that under .420
regarding the reclamation plan and the reclamation measures that must be
addressed. BLM is responsible to determine if the financial guarantee is
acceptable. Not calculate the reclamation cost estimate for the
operator. How did we get here? As we know, as Matt was saying, it\'s
been a long road. We are under increased scrutiny all the time by
Congress through the GAO. In order to help ‑‑ I messed up there and got
ahead of myself. Let me back up to guidance as we are on the screen
right now. In order to help us to implement the 3809 regulations and in
terms of review young our reclamation costs, we issued a number of
guidances in 2000 three and one in 2004. The 2003 was our initial
guidance, which was issued on February 5, 2003, and it was revised in
March 4th, 2004. Change 1. Then the new guidance, essentially, redefined
how we were to calculate our indirect cost rates which are a fixed 21%.
That 21% is actually the 21% of the administrative costs which are a
function of or percentage of the operating and maintenance costs in that
takes us up in 2003 oversight. In 2003 the GAO initiated an audit of the
3809 financial guarantees. This was in part due to the revised
regulations. It took two years for the GAO to finish their report and as
many of you know, you were interviewed by GAO, they visited your offices
compiling data and information to come up with a report. What they found
in 2005 was that BLM needs to better manage financial assurances to
guarantee coverage of reclamation costs. And we move onto the next
slide. In the GAO report it\'s recommended two things\... one, they
required that the BLM state directors were to ensure that hardrock
operations have required financial assurances and that the financial
assurances are based on sound reclamation plans and current cost
estimates. In addition, they wanted us to modify LR‑2000 to ensure it
attracts critical information on hardrock operations and financial
assurances to effectively ensure requirements are met in that so, from
that report, BLM had to develop a management plan. Or shall I say action
plan? BLM\'s action plan to implement the GAO\'s recommendation was
presented to Congress in September of 2005. It was implemented with the
issuance of IM2006‑172 on June 26 entitled fiscal year bond review
report. The bond review report, that was a task that the field
undertook, and I have to say thank you all for the time and effort that
you took in order to comply with it. Because what you had to do was
update all the case files out there for 3809, notices and plans of
operations, to the new data standards. This report will be generated on
a yearly basis, and the state directors are to provide written
certification to the BLM Director by December 1st of each year for the
following fiscal year that all reclamation bonds requiring review for
adequacy according to policy and regulations have been completed and if
not, an action plan needs to be developed to correct any omissions or
deficiencies if necessary. Other cost estimating tools. During the
interim from the revised regulations of the GAO report and our now
contract with the Sherpa, numerous offices out there and individuals had
created their own spreadsheets to complete the task at hand, and what we
would like Arizona and Nevada, who are two states in particular who
created spreadsheets that have been used by others, and we thank you
very much for the effort that you folks have put into that. SHERPA\'S
use is not mandatory but it\'s recommended. It\'s another tool that we
have in our toolboxes here in order to complete the tasks of identifying
and reviewing reclamation cost estimates provided to us by the
operators. No tool does everything. But Sherpa should be used for those
who have developed reclamation cost estimate spreadsheets to verify,
check and see how we\'re all doing. SHERPA\'S unit costs will be updated
on a quarterly basis in order to keep our estimates as accurate and as
current as possible. SHERPA\'S use may enhance a specialist\'s
efficiency in processing new proposals, processing modifications for
notices, plans, conducting timely bond reviews and maintaining the
LR‑2000 bond review report, which will be used on a yearly basis by the
State Director to supply information to the BLM Director. Other uses.
Sherpa was not just designed and nor does it just have to be used for
3809 reclamation cost estimates. It can also be used for
mineral/materials sites and abandoned mines lands. You are going to
receive a lot of information today as Scott Stebbins goes through the
program and a lot of you may have a lot of questions regarding, oh,
gosh, how do we determine what equipment to use? What do I do? Well, so
you know, BLM, or the national Training Center, does offer a class in
mine beneficiation.

\>\> The mine and beneficiation cost course is scheduled for January of
2008 and you don\'t have to be a mineral examiner. You don\'t each have
to want to be a mineral examiner. You just need to be a geologist or ‑‑
it\'s open to anyone that deals with solid minerals.

\>\> With that I\'ll be they\'re take any kind of questions and make
comments as need be as we go through the course here and I turn it over
to Matt.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I\'ll take it, for a moment, anyway, then we\'ll go
back to Scott. As you might surmise here with both of our instructors to
my right named Scott, we\'re in for an interesting time today. So if you
do have a question and you\'re calling in, I think the chances are
pretty good you\'re going to want to ask Scott Stebbins the question,
but you need to be kind of specific, and if we stumble through it, well,
we\'ll stumble through it. Another thing to watch for is we\'ve got a
whole crew of people working in the control room, and they can talk to
us through these little things in our ears like you see on TV news. So
if suddenly we get a deer in the headlights look, it means we\'re
hearing voices. That\'s all right. They\'re voices we\'re supposed to
hear. So with us. None of us are professional TV personalities and I
think we would like to keep it that way. Before we get going, though,
there are some things you need to really be aware of Scott Murrellwright
touched on a moment ago. The program Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds is
really just a way of estimating costs based on data that you\'ve already
collected. Or at least you should have collected. You need to have a
pretty good knowledge of mine cost estimation, what equipment to use,
what earthwork looks like and what it requires and especially you need
to be able to understand unit operations, which by unit operations I
mean using a bulldozer to push X number of yards X feet up a certain
grade. We\'ll be getting to that shortly. A shorter way of saying this,
though, is that Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds is not going to let you
make a reclamation cost estimate just by saying, I have a 400 acre open
pit mine and entering 400 acres open pit and then looking for a cost per
acre. There really is nothing that will do that for you. Working out the
discreet steps of a reclamation plan, working out the unit operations
may actually be the most difficult part of it and by the time you get to
the point where you can use Sherpa for Reclamation Bonds you\'re
probably going to be two‑thirds done. Now let\'s turn it over to Scott
Stebbins, and, Scott, take it away.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I will. That brings up a very good point. This program
really is just one big fancy, really big fancy calculator. It isn\'t an
engineering tool. It doesn\'t do design work for you. Although you can
use it to do design work. But we want to keep in perspective what the
program does for you. But let\'s back up and talk about our course
objective, what we want you to get out of this today is that when an
applicant submits a reclamation plan or cost estimate to you, we want
you to be able to use this program to verify the costs that he or she
comes up with.

\>\> M. Shumaker: The idea here is that we hope that the applicant is
going to give us a plan of operations with a reclamation plan that\'s
sufficiently detailed to just sit down and look at it and start
crunching numbers. In the real world, of course, we know that\'s not
going to be the case.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Never is. As you\'ll find out tonight when you try to
work this example. Anyway, thanks for the introduction, Matt. My company
as many of you know, what we do, is estimate costs. That\'s what we do
for a living. We have developed several different software packages that
people use to estimate costs of all kinds of things, including mining,
mineral processing, reclamation, Placer mining, open pit and underground
operations. The program we have here today, though, is based just for
reclamation work, and it\'s quite different than most of the products
we\'ve come up with. What we want to do today is tell you what you need
to know about what kind of information you need to gather to do this
sort of work and to run the program. We want you to go away from here
knowing what the program will do, what it won\'t do, what it\'s intended
to do. We\'re hoping you\'ll have a good understanding of how the
program works when we\'re done, and one of the big issues on my part is
what I want to do is give you a tool that you can take with you to an
applicant, or he can come to you, you can sit down with him, you can
work with the applicant to come up with a mutually agreeable bondable
value.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I want to dive in here and mention that Sherpa for
Reclamation Bonds is also available to anybody who would like to buy a
copy. This isn\'t a commercial for Scott or Adventurine Engineering, but
any member of the public who would like to mine or estimate costs and
does that for even cost estimation for reclamation can as a recreational
process buy a copy and you can compare notes and the inputs.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Yes. We have about 40 of these out right now. Before
we shipped out to the BLM evaluators. It\'s been out two or three years.
So we do have some feedback as far as the program goes. Hopefully
you\'re going to give us a lot more feedback. Now, the thing about this
is, talking about engineering and cost estimating may not be as
fascinating to any of you as it is to me. But I want you to go away from
here with really there\'s several really important points, I think, that
I need you to know when you go away from here. If we can have the next
slide, I\'ll go through those.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I believe that would be slide number 704.

\>\> S. Stebbins: You\'re right. 704. Thank you. These are the key
things I want you to remember. As Matt touched on, a lot of the
information you get is in acres, and for the most part, if you\'re
trying to figure out how much something costs, an acre isn\'t going to
do you much good unless it\'s something you\'re going to throw out over
the acre or spread over the acre like seed or fertilizer. What we need
to work in when we\'re trying to figure out how much something costs to
do is in volumes, in measurements of distances, things like that. So we
want to know like cubic yards. We want to work in haul distances in
terms of feet over gradients. How much uphill hauling there is going to
be. We want to work in things that will give us the information we need
to calculate costs. So typically we do want to work in cubic yards.
Instead of just acres. That\'s one mind set we want to try to get you
into, is to think more along the lines of volumes and distances and less
along the lines of just acres of disturbance. To that end, when you look
at one of these applications or you go out to a site, we want you to
work to produce maps and sketches and measurements and we need good
visualization of the site, meaning that things need to be on paper in a
way that we can measure, that we can do calculationses,
engineering‑based calculations based on some real hard actual
measurements. The next major I want you to go away from here with is
that we want to at least provide you a tool, and I\'m not totally
certain about the management\'s approach on this, your management\'s
approach on this, but I want to give you a tool you can sit down with
the applicant with and look at specific numbers, look at things like
haul distances, cycle times, how many hours it takes to do a job, with
the applicant sitting there so you and he can work together to come up
with an agreeable bond value. Or to resolve any disagreements about the
value. The program, our programs, are set up in engineering‑based
application and they\'re primarily cost estimating tools. So the fourth
thing I want you to remember is what this program does primarily is
estimate the costs of the work itself. This is essentially the checks
the contractor will have to write to get the work done. The program then
goes on to add on all these other things that you need to come up with
the bond value, and you\'ll see that as we go through the examples
today. Now, the programs are set up, as I say, I do estimate costs for a
living, but if you do that, you very soon recognize that every cost you
estimate is under some scrutiny, and somebody else will know a more
reliable or better cost for each individual item. So the program is set
up so you can overwrite any value or any calculated value, any estimated
value, any cost that the program has in its database or that it
calculates for you. We encourage you to do that. If you have better
information, don\'t rely on this program. We also encourage you, and
this is a big part of Mr. Shumaker\'s and my agreement, we want to
continue to work to make this program better, and that\'s what we\'re
going to do, but you guys out there are going to be a great database for
my company. If you have better information that\'s in the ‑‑ than
that\'s in the program, please send it to me. If you see something in
the program that you don\'t think is working correctly, please let me
know immediately. Any problems you have, anything you can see that we
can do to improve the program, we need to do that. So you guys will get
a lot of applications. You\'ll get a lot of cost data that will improve
the value, the reliability of the results of this program.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Please send constructive comments to Scott and point
out areas where things don\'t work. Just getting an e‑mail from somebody
saying, you know, Scott, your program is a crosswalk of ‑‑ crock of
pickles. If there is a problem he would like to know where and it will
be fixed. It will be updated quarterly. As we find glitches, they will
get taken care of.

\>\> S. Stebbins: And if you like, this is part of the contract, if you
do an evaluation and you would like me to take a look at it to make sure
you entered the data right, to make sure the data seems reasonable, send
me your project file and I\'ll take a quick look at it and get back to
you and tell you what I think.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Don\'t be thinking just because Scott says you can
send the project file, don\'t be thinking you can box up the entire case
file into box after box of stuff and ask him to short it out for you.
Really what he means is he would like ‑‑ he\'s willing to look at your
results to see if they\'re reasonable.

\>\> S. Stebbins: By project file, I mean the file that\'s ‑‑ that you
save when you\'re working on the program. Those are the things, main
things, that I\'m going to say to you now up front before I put you to
sleep, and I\'m going to repeat them when we\'re all done. So if you
walk away with just knowing that, I think you\'re a couple big steps
ahead of where you were when you showed up today. The other thing is
that speaking of voices in your head, I have to listen to mine all the
time, and it puts me to sleep. So we could ‑‑ we\'ll be here a while,
and if I\'m going to be talking for like eight hours straight, you are
going to fall asleep, so I\'m going to encourage you to give me as much
feedback as you can, ask me questions. I\'ve got a couple e‑mails of
people that just hate the program, and, you know, I am going to run into
that once in a while. I\'ll talk to you guys, too. We\'ll try to sort
things out. Anything you want to talk about, anything that is confusing
to you, any questions you have, please don\'t leave me sitting up here
for eight hours. It\'s like my worst nightmare. So let\'s move on and
get into some of this.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We are running about 15 minutes behind based on this
morning\'s echos, but that\'s normal for us to not exactly be on
schedule. So, Scott, let\'s get right into it.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Okay. I probably should have done that when ‑‑ I\'ve
been babbling for quite some time now. When we\'re doing cost
estimating, what we want to know are things that cost money, and on any
site, if you are doing a reclamation project, what costs money,
logically, would be work. If you remember back to your high school
physics or college physics days, work is simply force ‑‑ the product of
force and distance. Let\'s ask you a question. What\'s the ‑‑ what\'s
force? What are the components of force? Anybody out there? Any physics
majors want to show off what they know about force? Ralph Costa, you
should know.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Amanda Dodson is good.

\>\> S. Stebbins: And Tom Sweeney, Mike Sweeney, I\'m going to put you
on the spot all day.

\>\> Caller: I appreciate it. Isn\'t it FM equals ‑‑ F equals MA,.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Beautiful, mass times acceleration. We\'ve broken down
work is equal to mass, that\'s weight that\'s a volume, times
acceleration, getting something to move. Now, if you remember the
components, it\'s a time thing. It\'s getting something to move a
distance over a period of time, and that time in the acceleration mode
but that\'s not what we\'re concerned about, and there\'s a distance,
and that distance will really tell us about time. So my point is, if I
ever get to it, is that we\'re moving a mass over a certain distance,
over a certain period of time. It\'s going to take energy to move that
mass and energy costs money. And it\'s going to take time to move that
mass and time costs money because we have to pay people to do it. As
we\'re looking at these sites, as you get a reclamation plan in or
you\'re out looking around, I don\'t want you looking at how big the
area is and thinking to yourself, well, I\'ve got 40 acres. I want you
to look for piles of dirt, and I want you to look for holes in the
ground. Piles of dirt we need to move somewhere. How are we going to
move that? Where are we going to move that to? Find out a route you need
to move that over. There also if you want to stick with this, moving
supplies to the site to do some of the work, like you might have to
bring in concrete to fill in drill holes. You might have to bring in
BENTONITE. You might have to bring in seed or fertilizer, and then
distribute them on the site. That is moving materials and that costs
money. Without going into that too far, we could talk about everything
you have to do on a site to do a reclamation, but we\'re not going to
worry about that. We want to start thinking in terms of how we use this
information in the program. So one thing you should have right now I\'m
hoping is you should have the program up and running on your computer
screens and you should have the tutorial loaded, and I\'m not sure if I
did this or not, but I think if you weren\'t able to get the tutorial to
run or you weren\'t able to successfully complete the tutorial, I think
most of you I sent a file that actually has the tutorial in it as a
project file. So let\'s get that up and running on your screen, if you
can.

\>\> M. Shumaker: What we would like you to do if you possibly can is
bring the tutorial up and follow through screen by screen as Scott works
through it, and actually it\'s not called a tutorial in your manual.
It\'s just a sample problem. That was an interesting sound coming from
somewhere.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Does anybody have a question or anything?

\>\> Caller: Does the tutorial show up in the menus or how do we get
access?

\>\> S. Stebbins: If you go to the right side of the results menu and
you go down to file utilities ‑‑ maybe we could bring the computer
screen up. So this is the project output menu. If you go down to file
use sill tease and click on that, and then you\'ll get a screen that
sells you where your files are saved. This file should be saved in the
root directory of your program and it\'s just tutorial.SHP. So you click
on that and then you go over here and click open on the right side of
the screen, and it should load up the tutorial. I\'ve already got it
loaded, so I\'m not going to click open. I\'m going to click return.

\>\> M. Shumaker: But if you don\'t have it up and running, you do need
to click open. One of the things that\'s going on behind the scenes here
is in our other studio we actually have an immense television screen
that shows the computer screen and there\'s a person with a high
resolution camera that\'s following along. So we may a run a little bit
of a lag between what Scott says and what actually comes up on the
screen but we\'ll work our way through it.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Okay. So now, we\'re going to start talking about the
information we need to start putting in the program, and when you get an
application in, or when you\'re looking at a site, what you\'re going to
have to do is develop the information that, of course, we need to do
this, and I think the best way to do that is, first of all, to do a site
characterization before anything has happened on the site. You\'re going
to need essentially a good topographic map of the site. You\'re going to
have to understand where the water flows on the site, where the
drainages are, where the high and low spots on the site are. You\'ll
have to know if there\'s anything on the site that we put there,
mankind, buildings, foundations, derelict equipment, anything like that.
After we have that information, after you have ‑‑ I should back up here.
This is a typical site characterization but it\'s not an EIS level site
characterization. We\'re not measuring or counting how many field mice
are out there or how many bear walk through every six months or anything
like that. If I step on toes, let me know, Matt. What we need to know is
things that are engineering based, what we are ‑‑ what the site looks
like now under the assumption that we may want to return the site to the
way it looks now or if there\'s things on the site before we even start
that we have to deal with like derelict vehicles, we have to know about
those. So that\'s like going to be your first map to start with. Then
after that, we want to know what the site\'s going to look like when the
project is up and running. So we want a pretty thorough mine and mill or
project plan. We want to know where the mine openings are going to be,
if it\'s an underground mine. If it\'s a service mine we want to know
where the pits are going to be. We want to nowhere the tailings are
going to be stored. More importantly from our perspective, we want to
know how big those dumps and tailings facilities are going to be. If we
have the amount of material that\'s stored in these sites, then we can
do just a standard engineering cost estimate as to the work that\'s
going to be involved to return the site to normal. We want to know where
water is going to be stored. We want to know how it\'s going to flow
around the site, if there\'s going to be any trenches, if there\'s going
to be any diversion dams. To know where the buildings are going to be,
where the roads are going to be, where the mine equipment will be
parked, where the workers\' cars will be parked. We need to know maybe
where the explosives are going to be stored. Anything that will alter
the site, we want to know about. So once we have that information, the
next thing we need is a reclamation plan. We want to know what the site
is going to look like when we\'re done and the engineering aspect of
this is we want to know the work we\'re going to have to do to return
that site to the way it ‑‑ we want it to look. An awful lot of that is
just moving material. It\'s not all moving material, of course, but
that\'s what I\'m harping on at least right now, is we have volumes and
weights of material that need to be moved. We have disturbances that
probably are earthwork related that we need to try to return to the way
they looked when things started. We want to know if any hazardous
materials have been left behind. We want to know if we\'re going to need
fences or if we have to take away fences that are already there. We need
to know if there are buildings that we need to demolish and remove,
foundations that we might have to get rid of. We need to know if there
are derelict pieces of equipment or in ‑‑ you know, in the case of an
operating mine, just pieces of equipment that they\'re going to leave
there when they go. I\'m looking at Mr. Murrellwright to see if he wants
to jump in and say we\'re not going to let them do that. Are you crazy?
Anyway, all these things will cost money to do and we\'ll just keep
harping on this, this is what we\'re doing here, figuring out how much
it\'s going to cost to do this work. Let\'s go to slide 709. Once we
have this information, then our job is to figure out the work that\'s
going to be required to this, and that\'s where the program comes in.
We\'re going to have to enter into the program all this information
about volumes and haul distances and fencing requirements, pumping
requirements, all these things, all these numbers, values, that we
develop through this plan we\'re going to enter into the program. Then
the program is just going to take this information and it\'s going to do
just what any of you would do on a spreadsheet or on a piece of
engineering pad paper. It\'s going to start calculating. It\'s going to
break things down, first of all, into three categories, primarily. The
first is the amount of labor that will be needed to accomplish these
tasks. You know, labor is needed to drive equipment out there, to drive
machinery back and forth to the site. Labor is required to fill in drill
holes. It\'s required to build bat gates. It\'s required to put up
fences. Almost everything you do out there will require labor. The next
thing we need to know are the supply requirements. Many of the tasks out
there will require the delivering supplies to the site. Of course, the
machines use fuel and oil in their work. But we\'re going to do a lot of
things like bring BENTONITE on the site to plug drill holes or cement to
plug drill holes, cement or maybe foam to close ADDITS and shafts, steel
to make bat gates. We may bring in fencing material. We\'re probably
almost in every case going to bring in some sort of soil amendment
material, mulching supplies or fertilizer. Very often we\'ll bring in
seed or live plants. So those are the first two components we\'re
worried about. And the third component is equipment. Now, of course,
we\'re not purchasing equipment to do these tasks, but if I understand
what happens here correctly, this ‑‑ what you\'re bonding for is the
work that will be done by the government when they hire a contractor to
go out and do the work that the claimant should have done.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s only in case the claimant didn\'t doesn\'t
perform the reclamation that they say they\'re going to perform.

\>\> S. Stebbins: what they\'re going to need to do, what your
contractor is going to need to do, of course, is he has to own the
equipment. And there\'s a cost associated with owning equipment. If he
buys a piece of machinery that will operate 20,000 hours, he has to
spread the purchase price of that machine out over that 20,000 hours.
But then there\'s also the more direct equipment operating cost we have
to think about. You have to buy new tires for the trucks every once in a
while or the wheel loaders. You need to buy tracks for the bulldozers or
for the hydraulic backhoes. You need to buy filters. You need to buy
bucket teeth, bearings, things like that. And, of course, the point of
the program is you guys don\'t have to worry about any of that. These
are all contained in the database of the program, including how much
this equipment related supplies are used up by the machines. There\'s
also some indirect costs associated with owning equipment, including
insurance costs, record keeping costs, storage costs, things like that.
So when you hire a contractor to do a job like this, you are going to ‑‑
part of his bid will be, of course, the costs of covering his operating
of his equipment. Now, this is what the program calculates first, are
these things, the labor, supplies and equipment operation associated
with the work that we need to do to return the site to the way we want
it to look. In addition to this, when we worry about bond values, we
have to consider all the indirect fees that go along with this. There
are several. They\'re significant, as you\'ll see. The first thing we
need to think about is a contingency. Now, very often a contingency is
looked upon as a fudge factor in the world of cost estimating, most
often contingency is a fund. It\'s a bank account. The money is put in
there to cover unforeseen geologic or technological problems that arise
as the work is being done. Most often that money is spent. So it\'s not
so much as a fudge factor for ‑‑ from a cost estimating standpoint as it
is a fund for the company to draw upon as it runs into unforeseen
problems as they\'re doing the work. Of course, the contractor is going
to want to make a profit. We\'ll talk a little more about this later.
This is really as far as coming up with a bond value the trickiest thing
to me to try to get a handle on because there\'s no such thing as
saying, well, a reasonable contractor profit is 12% or 15%. There\'s a
lot that goes into what they need to charge to do the work they need to
do, including the risk that\'s involved with the work they\'re doing.
The contractor is going to need liability insurance, both to protect the
people that are working for him, to protect the site against some
unforeseen, undue degradation that he might cause out there, and he also
needs to insure against his own failure to perform the task that you\'re
requiring him to do. As you\'ll see, well with, we\'re talking about it
right now, professional services are also involved in this. There\'s
quite a big step from coming up with enough of a design, enough of a
reclamation plan to do a cost estimate, that step to the step of
actually starting to do the work is where this engineering and design
work comes in, because they really need to nail things down as to where
they\'re going, where they\'re going to put them and how much effort is
going to actually be involved, but we need to cover the cost of that in
the bond amount. The other couple other things we need to think about
are the agency costs. The BLM incurs costs when they have to perform
this type of task. You\'re going to manage the project. You\'re going to
oversee the project. There are going to be people involved in that, and
those fees have to be covered, too.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I would just like to interject real quickly, based on
the fees that Scott\'s putting up here, I would encourage you folks in
the field to take a look at IM2004‑082 change 1. There\'s some cut‑offs
in there regarding what, say, contingency fee. It\'s applicable to
administrative costs, contracts over \$100,000. So you need to go
through the IM and take a look at and see what some of the ceilings are
regarding some of the dollar amounts, percentages, regarding
contingency. Also for some of the other like liability insurance. I
would encourage you to take a look at that IM and refresh yourself with
it.

\>\> M. Shumaker: What was that IM number again?

\>\> S. Murrellwright: 2004‑082 change 1 issued on March 4th, 2004.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Don\'t worry, if you can\'t remember that, just get in
contact with Scott afterward and he\'ll be glad to repeat the IM number
again.

\>\> S. Murrellwright: By all means. E‑mail me and I can get it to you
and send it to you also.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Moving right along, we\'re still running a little
behind, but go ahead, Scott. We left off with indirect fees and
management and agency overhead.

\>\> S. Stebbins: According to me we\'re way ahead of where we need to
be, but I don\'t know.

\>\> M. Shumaker: You know what you\'re doing.

\>\> S. Stebbins: That\'s a debatable point, isn\'t it? First of all,
let me back up a minute. A lot of you have already sent in some really
good suggestions. According to the ‑‑ I forget names ‑‑ but as far as
some of the fees, somebody sent in some just really good hard data, and
I am sorry I don\'t remember your names, but some of the stuff you have
sent in has been so helpful and I want to encourage that and keep going.
A fellow sent in a lot of good information about drill hole reclamation
work. A couple people, Bob Lewis, you\'re out there, I know, you found a
couple things in the program itself that just labeling things we need to
deal with. But like I say, I want to really encourage you to keep doing
that. My business, the goal of my business, is to really produce the
best software we can produce, and we know that ‑‑ because I have done it
enough to know that it\'s something we have to just keep working at.
It\'s not like any other software that I\'ve seen that\'s available out
there. It does an interesting combination of database querying and
engineering calculations. We work hard to try to keep up with what\'s
going on in the world of software, which is another trick. So the
information you give me will help me and my company produce the best
software we can produce, and Matt\'s foresight has written that into the
contract that we\'ll keep doing that. I want to thank you and I\'ll
probably thank you again over the course of the next couple days and
encourage you to keep doing that.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Just show you\'ll know, the contract we have with the
Adventurine Engineering is a multi‑‑year contract. So the information
you provide to Scott to help him improve the program will come back for
several years to us. If I recall correctly, we\'re in year one with four
renewable years. So this is kind of a long‑term thing.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Four years?! You\'re going to be retired well before
then. I\'m doomed. Isn\'t that true?

\>\> M. Shumaker: I\'m not counting the days.

\>\> S. Stebbins: He says that. But we have been here. We know maybe
that\'s not totally true. Let\'s talk about how the program works. I
know an awful lot of you guys out there, Alan young is out there, I
know, a lot ‑‑ Bob Lewis is out there I know. You guys probably don\'t
each need this program, and I know that Scott, Mr. Murrellwright,
recommends that you ‑‑ or the BLM in general recommends that you use the
software, and, of course, I want you to use the software, but if you can
come up with better numbers doing a spreadsheet type analysis, of
course, do that. This program should provide a really good way for you
to do this type of work, and it\'s got some advantages over a
spreadsheet in that mainly it\'s database. We have costs for an awful
lot of information that\'s available. Some of it just to ‑‑ Adventurine
Engineering through our contracts with western mine engineering, we work
hard to develop sources for all kinds of other costs like fencing
materials, Bentonite, some of the really more obscure things you\'ll run
into when putting a estimate together. Bat gate. Water treatment
facilities. We spend a lot of time gathering cost information that will
hopefully you won\'t have to go through to do the work you need to do.
The other thing is, of course, is this is all about updating these
costs. Every 90 days we\'re going to send you a new program ‑‑ well,
won\'t get in too much trouble there ‑‑ it will have the same version
number there, but maybe to back away from the I.T. ‑‑ probably said as
much as I should say there, but we\'re going to send you out every 90
days a program that\'s got updated cost information in it. We, of
course, don\'t update all the cost information every 90 days because we
don\'t get that cost information that regularly. A lot of the
information from western mine engineering comes annually. But we\'ll
work hard, it will be a real advantage, I think, is that you\'ll have
the programs every 90 days updated with the new cost information. The
other thing we\'re trying to keep up on is the wage information that you
need to use in this sort of evaluation, and if you have been to the site
that allows you to look at Davis‑Bacon scales you\'ll notice it\'s a
little bit difficult to figure out sometimes and we\'re trying to keep
up with that information. So there are advantages to using this program,
but as I say, you guys that work on spreadsheets, have been doing them a
long time and been gathering inform a long time, please don\'t think I
think this is necessary ‑‑ it\'s necessary for you to replace the way
you do things with this program. If you can come up with a better
number, of course, I want you to use that number. And that\'s one of the
advantages of this program. It\'s one of the ways it\'s set up, is that
you can overwrite any number in it, any number it calculates, suggested
value, and particularly any result, actually, and that\'s because even
though I do it for a living, I know there are people out there that are
much more in tune with very specific aspects of the costs of very
specific operations than I have time to do. So that\'s one of the
aspects of the way the program is set up, that it can benefit you. Now,
the program itself, and I say this a lot, it\'s an engineering‑based
program. We duty same calculations that you do ‑‑ we do the same
calculaitons you do. We always start, really, with cycle times. We\'ll
have a situation where maybe we have a bunch of material. Let\'s just
talk about what a cycle time is for those of you who don\'t know. If we
have a bunch of material we want to move somewhere, we\'ll have a
machine to pick up that material, and it\'s going to have a bucket with
a certain size associated with that bucket. Maybe it\'s 10 cubic yards
and maybe you have a thousand cubic yards of material. So it\'s going to
take 100 scoops of that bucket to pick up that material and put it into
something, and fit takes 45 seconds for each bucketload, we do that
simple calculation. For you purists out there, the program, of course,
accounts for things like availability and operator efficiency and bucket
fill factors and you\'ll see when you are using the programs we worry a
lot about material densities and ‑‑ for Bob Lewis, not swell factors but
percent swell. So we do account for all these things, but just to get a
basic idea of when we talk in engineering based calculation, what we\'re
talking about is figuring out how long it takes to do something given a
specific piece of machinery. So let\'s say it takes 100 bucket loads and
it\'s, just to make it easy a minute a bucket. It takes 100 minutes for
that machine to do that work. When we have that number, we can figure
out how many minutes it\'s going to take for an operator to do that.
There\'s an efficiency associated with that operator, so it will
probably take him ‑‑ he\'ll be on the payroll for a little more than 100
minutes to do that work. If we have those two things, if we have 100
minutes for that Front‑end loader and we have more than 100, 120 minutes
for that operator, if we have those two pieces of information, which are
really basic engineering calculations, the program can go on to query
its database to figure out how much it costs to do that work, because in
the database simple things like how much it costs to operate that
machine for an hour and how much it costs for that worker to work for an
hour, his wage. So the program is designed that way. Just like I think
most of you would do on it a spreadsheet. I will tell you, it\'s really
quiet out there.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s a good point. We would like to remind you that
at any time you can jump in with a question, and we encourage questions.
So let us know.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Or a comment. Maybe, Mr. Stebbins, you don\'t know
what you\'re talking about, you know. Or anything along those lines. I
keep waiting for Mike Sweeney to do that, but you\'re very quiet today,
Mike. So the program does its estimates, particularly the earth moving
estimates, based on this type of approach. The program also ‑‑ by the
way, I think we\'re on slide 720 ‑‑ there you go ‑‑ does a lot of site
work type estimates, and these are really fairly simple calculations
once you have the data to work with. An example would be if you had ‑‑
you know, if you needed 2,000 feet of fencing while you\'re reclaiming
the site, maybe you need to put a fence up around an open pit or a pond
or the finished tailings facility, we have prices in the database for
several different types of fencing, and, of course, those calculations
would be fairly simple. If you need 2,000 feet of feet of fencing and
you choose chain link with barbed wire, there will be a cost on a
per‑foot basis. Those calculations are very simple. There are a lot of
those types of calculations available in the program. The faux sis I
want to make here is this isn\'t a statistically based cost estimating
system. That\'s not what my company does. They\'re engineering based
calculations just like most of you would do.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I want to jump in with that. For those of you that may
remember the old CES system at the ‑‑ that the Bureau of mines had,
which was based on average data and average curves, this is not how
Sherpa for reclamation works. Sherpa for reclamation is more of a nuts
and bolts grass roots estimation more of the site we emphasize here at
the training inner.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Very true. Speaking of the Bureau of mines, Alan
Buehler, I understand you\'re listening. And I understand
congratulations are in order. Anyway, the program goes through this work
to come up with its cost estimates for the work that\'s involved. Again,
let\'s back up. This is just the cost of the work that\'s involved to
reclaim the site. It\'s the checks really that the contractor will have
to write to get the work done. He\'ll have to pay his crew. He\'ll have
to pay for the equipment, operating supplies. He\'ll have to pay for any
supplies that he has to bring onto the site. That\'s all we\'ve
calculated so far. That\'s really essentially the first half of how this
program works. You\'ll see, you go ‑‑ those of you who have done the
tutorial, you just go in, you enter this data we\'ve talked about, the
programs do the calculations, really pretty much right in front of you,
and the programs then spit out those values. Then from that point we
move on to essentially the second step in the way the program operates,
and that\'s where the program does the work it needs to come up with the
value that you\'ll have to bond for. I\'m not really an expert on
bonding, so I don\'t want to go into it too much. That\'s not the check
that the company needs to write for the bond. That\'s something else
again. But you do need to do ‑‑ or come up with a value that needs to be
bonded, and that\'s what we\'re talking about here. Which is really the
entire cost of getting the work done, managing the work, covering all
the indirect costs, and so the second step in this program is to take
those costs that we\'ve come up with and apply a series of factors to
come up with these indirect costs. And those include, let me just list
them off on the screen, we\'re going to have some mobilization costs,
getting the equipment to the site and back. We\'re going to have that
contingency we spoke about earlier. We\'re going to have the profit for
the contractor. We need the liability insurance. We have in the list the
bond premium and the idea there is that that\'s still part of the entire
cost, is the premium you\'ll have to pay for the bond. We have the
professional engineering and design fees. We have the agency indirect
fees. And we have the agency management fees. Now, when Sherpa does its
mobilization costs, it does it ‑‑ let\'s back up one slide here to where
we were. Slide 723, I think it is. When Sherpa does its mobilization
costs with the first cost on this list, it does it like it calculates
any other cost. We want ‑‑ we\'re talking weight and time and distance.
So we have the program ‑‑ in the program the weights of all the
machinery you\'re going to have to haul onto the site. If you need a D8
Dozer ‑‑ we don\'t use those terms because we don\'t want to get in
trouble with the Caterpillar people, but if you have a 280 horsepower
Dozer, the weight of that machine is in the database along with the
size. When we have weights for really every machine that you would need
to haul out to the site and back. Given those weights we can figure out
what size of conveyance we need to get the machine out there, how big a
truck. With that information, if we know the kind of truck we need, we
know how far we need to haul this piece of machinery, we know how far we
need to haul it back, of course, and we have some idea of fast this
conveyance can go getting to the site and back, it\'s fairly simple step
after to that figure out how much it costs to do that. So our
mobilization costs are actual calculations, just like the rest of those
calculations that we spoke of earlier. They\'re time, distance, cycle
time calculations. So the point is, I want to make sure you understand,
is that this is a two‑step process to use this program. I\'ll explain
why I want you to understand this in a minute actually. We calculate the
costs, the program Cal calculates the costs of doing the work and then
we add on the fees, including mobilization, and that\'s the amount we
bond for. Like I say we have quite a few copies of this program out to
people that aren\'t in the BLM. People will notice, and they\'ll call me
up, send me an e‑mail, many of you know I don\'t answer the phone as
much as I should because it\'s always ringing, the people will get an
estimate from somebody to do some work. They will get an estimate to
maybe regrade a tailings pond and they\'ll have a volume associated with
this. And they\'ll have something that comes up ‑‑ you\'ll see it later
today. They\'ll say, my contractor tells me it will cost \$5,000 an acre
to do this work. You\'ll go through and do the volume calculation, and
then you\'ll put the information into Sherpa and you\'ll duty cost
estimate and it will come out \$2200 or \$2800 to do the same job and
you\'ll say to yourself, man this, program sucks. What you need to know
is that all we\'ve calculated in the program to this point is the cost
to do the actual work. You know, if you go and then add in all these
other things, you\'ll see we\'re probably getting very close to the cost
that you\'re comparing it against. So the reason I bring this up is
because as I mentioned earlier the way I want the program to be applied
is for you to be able to sit down with an applicant and compare costs,
and those things not match up all that well until the cost of the
specific unit operations might not match up all that well until you get
to the point of adding in all the indirects. Let\'s talk ‑‑

\>\> Caller: Question.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Good. Yes.

\>\> Caller: This is Mike Sweeney in Spokane, professor Stebbins. I was
wondering after all ‑‑ the direct costs are calculated using Sherpa are
the indirect costs just a percentage based on those direct costs or are
those actually you go out and find specific ‑‑

\>\> S. Stebbins: Well, the ‑‑ they are percentages. Everything except
the project mobilization fee is a percentage of the other costs.
Mr. Sweeney, I believe actually you might have given me those numbers. I
can\'t remember if I got them from you or your Oregon office, but
you\'ll see here in a while those numbers are just percentage
calculations of the other costs we\'ve come up with, and those
percentages, as I say, we were provided most of them, I think, by the
BLM, but they have changed, and one very nice fellow wrote in informing
me of some of those changes, and Mr. Murrellwright right here has
noticed the factors I have in there right now are a little off, some of
them, and, of course, in the next update should come out about the first
of July, 90 days after ‑‑ excuse me, the end of July, 90 days after we
mailed the first ones to you here, and we\'ll put in the new fees that
go along with that. But you\'ll see like every single value in the
program, you\'re going to get so sick of hearing me say that, you can
type you over what\'s in there now if you know the number you\'re
currently using. But, yes, thanks for the question. That\'s how it is
calculated. They are percentages of the costs that we\'ve come up with
up to this point.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Are we still on slide 723?

\>\> S. Stebbins: We\'re on slide 724. Any other questions? As I\'ve
said before, but I want to emphasize this point, and an awful lot of you
have ended up in situations ‑‑ any one of you that estimates cost have
ended up in a situation where people disagree with the numbers you come
up with. It\'s about as common ‑‑ you ask somebody how much it costs to
buy a car, and I will tell you \$22,000 and somebody will stand up
immediately and say, hey, he can\'t get anything decent for under
\$28,000. They might be right. But every single assumption you make in a
cost estimate can come under scrutiny, and so much of it is subjective,
and so much is experience based that the program ‑‑ when I design these
things, what I want most of all to portray to you is that you\'re not
stuck with my assumptions. You can overwrite anything in here and you
have to be able to overwrite anything in here just for what has
transpired about those percentages in the last ‑‑ I\'m sorry, I don\'t
know when these came about. So what I want most of all is to figure out
a way for people to avoid these types of situations where disagreements
are kind of unresolvable. I know an awful lot of you guys, I\'m speaking
now because I spent a few days on the witness stand over the past couple
years, and I know a couple of you have, too, and the ‑‑ unless somebody
understands exactly how something is calculated, there\'s really very
difficult task ahead of you resolving these conflicts that you might
have. So I want this program to be set up in a way that you sit down
with somebody and you\'re looking at a screen and the screen says that
this Dozer, this 280‑horsepower Dozer is going to have to operate 325
hours to do this job, and it\'s going to cost so many dollars an hour to
operate this Dozer, and then you\'re going to have a number on the right
that\'s just the product of those two numbers, and then if somebody
disagrees with you, they will have to show you, \"well, I can do it in
110 hours, and my bulldozer ‑‑ my daughter drives the bulldozer. So I
don\'t have to pay the labor charges you\'re asking me to pay.\"

\>\> S. Murrellwright: We\'re back again to what our policy is ‑‑ the
regulations say we are estimating these reclamation cost estimates as if
the BLM was to hire a third party contractor, not the operator\'s
daughter.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s right. If it were my daughter operating the
bulldozer, we would just have to pay her room and board and that
probably would do the trick. Scott we have a quick question here from
Las Vegas that maybe this ‑‑ it\'s a little off topic but I think it\'s
probably ask worth asking. George asks us basically the ‑‑ since the
program will be updated every 90 days, you how many days before your
mailing outdate do suggestions and corrections need to come in before
they can be worked into the system?

\>\> S. Stebbins: Oh, that\'s ‑‑ oh, man, sorry.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s a good question.

\>\> S. Stebbins: It is a great question, and I really don\'t know that
I\'ll be able to get all the suggestions that I have now into the July
version. It really depends on how many come in and my time schedule, and
I will ‑‑ all I can promise to do is be diligent about this. I do think
everything that\'s come in now I\'ll be able to get into the program.
There are a couple new screens I want to add that we\'ll talk about
later before I send it out to you that have come up. But let me just say
roughly that if you can get it to me 30 days before we do the mailing, I
should be able to incorporate it. If it\'s nothing too scary. If
there\'s some unusual ‑‑ you know, an unusual piece of equipment or
something that may be difficult to find the information we need to
estimate the costs, then it may take a little bit longer than that. But
let\'s say if you get it to me before 30 days I\'ll give a good shot at
getting it in there. The way a program works, I think Mr. Murrellwright
might want to say something.

\>\> S. Murrellwright: I wanted to interject something here. I think it
all depends also on what\'s being recommended by the field, the type of
change they\'re looking for in the. Number one, can it be done? Is it
really entirely useful? Number two, is it is, if it requires a
significant change to the program itself, it may require certain I.T.
scrutiny and blessing in order to get passed or changed.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Keep in mind also if what you\'re suggesting is just
something that is unusual and you could fix by just overwriting a more
accurate number, that\'s probably just the best way to handle it. Also,
my colleagues in the control room are probably wondering now how I got
George\'s question, and one of the things I haven\'t told a sole until
this very moment is I have my computer on the table with us and I\'m
logged into the network. So you can actually send a question by e‑mail
to my BLM e‑mail address, and that\'s how George asked. Anyway, go
ahead, Scott.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Go ahead with what? I completely lost track of where
we are here.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re on slide 724 and we\'re on program description
and methodology and we\'re moving into application and types of input.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I don\'t do this for a living, have you noticed?
We\'re losing our brains right now. Oh, man, that one hurt.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re getting some interesting feedback on the line.
It sounds like our office that\'s actually in a steel foundry is trying
to log in. So we\'ll work our way ‑‑ if you want to ask a question, turn
your TV down, and also remember, if your push‑to‑talk button doesn\'t
mute what\'s coming through the television, then you need to contact the
vendor for the push‑to‑talk machine, because something is wrong.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Is there a question coming in?

\>\> Caller: A question.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Okay.

\>\> Caller: Actually more of a comment. I think that ‑‑

\>\> S. Stebbins: We lost you on that one.

\>\> M. Shumaker: You have to hold the button down while you\'re asking.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Well, if you come back to it, if you get things
working, please, yeah, any comments you have, that\'s great.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Also, if your system is down, you can run down the
hall and send me an e‑mail. Go ahead.

\>\> Caller:\... has to do their calculations based on a third party
contractor taking over after the claimant is gone, so that\'s kind of a
point where people can reach the agreement and use this Sherpa as a
common calculating based.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We didn\'t get the whole question, but I think we got
the gist of it, and, yes, that\'s part of the idea behind Sherpa, is
that when we are verifying reclamation cost estimates, we need to do
this in a very transparent manner that people can look at it and argue
and agree or agree to disagree. Go ahead, Scott.

\>\> S. Stebbins: If it involves money, of course, people are going to
have trouble with it. But we do want to ‑‑ it\'s part of my goal, is to
accept some of the responsibility of coming up with the right numbers,
which my lawyer wouldn\'t have wanted me to say, but to heck with that.
We\'re trying to come up with good numbers. We want results that are
reasonable. But it\'s not easy. We have to keep working at it. And we
need, like I say, your input. I should say of the suggestions that have
come in, every single one that has come in, except one, I\'m going to
put in the program. They\'ve all been really, for the most part very
positive, and if you can keep doing that, we\'ll really get this thing
nailed down in really a fairly short time. We\'re going to run across
things that aren\'t in there, and like I say, if I can have 30 days ‑‑
Go ahead.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Do we have a question coming in?

\>\> S. Stebbins: Sorry. Anyway, yeah, if you can get it to me within 30
days, if it\'s something I need to talk over with Scott, I will. Most of
the comments up to this point have been along the lines of things that
have changed since I originally wrote the program. I am sorry, two of
the states I put the data in and I didn\'t put the state name in the
list so you could access the data. Of course, that change is easy to
make. Like I say, there\'s some labeling things and some things that I
need to add. We\'re still working on drill holes, although I think you
can come up with a reasonable number with the program the way it is, but
we\'ll ‑‑ we need more options as to how to close them. That\'s what I
anticipate most from you, is that things in Nevada are different than
things in Oregon and they\'re different than things in Montana as far as
what\'s required for reclamation work. So we may end up with a program
that you\'ll see you have to select what state you\'re in, that will
actually trigger different ways of ‑‑ let\'s just take drill holes for
example, of reclaiming drill holes or plugging drill holes that will
make automatically go to the drill hole plugging screen.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Go ahead. We\'re still in ‑‑ we need to move along.
We\'re down to about 40 minutes for this segment. Although if we run a
little long in this segment, we have a little fudge time built in. It
just cuts into our lunch.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I\'m hurrying up. Let\'s move on, then. Let\'s really
get to the program. Why don\'t you go ahead on your computer and bring
up, really, let\'s see, any screen ‑‑ let\'s go to ‑‑ let\'s go to the
project ‑‑

\>\> M. Shumaker: Let\'s hold off a second here. We have a call coming
in. It\'s from Utah. I\'m pushing the button to bring the call, and
it\'s not working. So while the control room works out what\'s going on
here ‑‑

\>\> S. Stebbins: Okay.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Okay.

\>\> Caller: Are you there?

\>\> M. Shumaker: Go ahead.

\>\> Caller: Threw?

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re here.

\>\> Caller: Maybe this question ‑‑ my name is Stan perks from the Utah
state office. Maybe this question is a little bit too involved at this
particular point in time, but I guess I have a question\... is operator
efficiency put in, like if you have a good operator versus a poor
operator for like a Dozer or a HOE or something like that?

\>\> S. Stebbins: If I remember right ‑‑ of course, it is considered in
the program. Now, whether you can change it or, let me take a look. I
forget. I think you can. Hold on.

\>\> Caller: This is different than job efficiency.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I understand. No, we don\'t ‑‑ I\'m sorry, let me ‑‑

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re looking at part of the computer entry screen
now.

\>\> S. Stebbins: No, we don\'t allow you right at this point, although
if you want, I\'m sure we can change it, but we don\'t have that in the
program for you to be able to change the operator efficiency. There is a
reason for that, and that is primarily that what we\'re doing is
assuming appear contractor will bid this project, and so we have assumed
an efficiency based on what we would consider an average operation for a
contractor, which I think is probably 83% or something like that. I\'m
not sure ‑‑ it\'s a great question, and when we do all our other cost
estimating work we, of course, consider that, but we\'re doing something
a little different here in that we\'re trying to decide what a
contractor will charge us to do it. But I\'m not against making that a
changeable option for you, but we can talk about that, if you want.

\>\> Caller: What about material efficiency? What if you have a material
you\'re trying to pick up or move that\'s like really, really sticky, or
something like that, is there an efficiency factor built in that you can
take that into account?

\>\> S. Stebbins: We have bucket fill factors. You can adjust cycle
times. I think there are really several ways you will be able to handle
that. Mainly in that case, if it ‑‑ if it were me and I didn\'t find
what I wanted in the program, meaning if the bucket fill factor
wouldn\'t do it for me, if I really am anticipating having to wash the
bucket every fourth load or something, then I would go to the cycle time
and change that directly. We are probably a little ahead of where we
should be, but they\'re great questions.

\>\> Caller: Okay.

\>\> S. Stebbins: You obviously know what you\'re talking about.

\>\> Caller: What about type of work efficiency, like if you were using
a Dozer, if you were slot dozing versus just spreading material out, the
efficiency would change, and so is that taken into account?

\>\> S. Stebbins: Well, let\'s get to those screens, and we\'ll be up
with them, and you do have ways to handle those sort of things. We
don\'t have checkbox for slot dozing versus a checkbox for straight
dozing or anything like that but we\'re pretty flexible on how you want
to handle this as you go down the road.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'ll probably get to that after the break, won\'t
we?

\>\> S. Stebbins: We\'ll see how it goes.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We will get there. So bear with us.

\>\> Caller: Sorry. These are a little premature.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Don\'t apologize. Please give us a call and ask
questions. We feel kind of like disc jockeys wondering is there anybody
throughout listening, and I guess there is.

\>\> S. Stebbins: And those are great questions. If you\'re talking
earth moving, they\'re great questions. One of my concerns is ‑‑ you
sound like maybe you\'re somebody that might be using your own
spreadsheet and maybe should be using your own spreadsheet. You\'re
getting into detailed estimating that may be a little beyond the scope
of this. I won\'t flat out say that. We\'ll let you look at what the
program can do before we decide that, but great questions.

\>\> Caller: What about lubricants? I saw that you ‑‑ fuel was on there,
and you were talking about filters and stuff like that that had been
included. What about lubricants?

\>\> S. Stebbins: Those are built into the database, the lubricant costs
and consumption rates are built into the database for each machine, of
course, we\'ll have a different consumption rate, but the cost is built
into the database.

\>\> Caller: What about insurance rates on the equipment itself to
insure the equipment itself, not liability of the contractor, but
insuring the equipment itself?

\>\> S. Stebbins: Those are included in the ownership costs and that\'s
in the database also for the machine.

\>\> M. Shumaker: I think we\'re still getting ahead, so if we don\'t
answer these questions as we work through the system, get back in touch
with us and we\'ll take care of you.

\>\> Caller: Thank you.

\>\> M. Shumaker: You bet.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Maybe when we get to this point I\'ll talk a little
bit more about what is in the database. I really hadn\'t ‑‑ I hope
you\'ll understand, although I know the technical level of a lot of you,
the technical abilities, a lot of you I don\'t, and when I teach a class
like this, a lot of people don\'t ‑‑ are not familiar with the
difference between a wheel loader and a track loader. So I want to gear
the talk to answer as many people\'s different levels of questions as I
can, but I also need to make sure the people that aren\'t as familiar
with this type of work get the information they need to move forward,
and I\'m sorry, you said your name, I think, and I\'ve already forgotten
it, but particularly specific detailed questions like that, you may want
to look at the database, how it\'s set up, and my e‑mail address is kind
of everywhere in your manual, and the letter I hopefully sent with it,
and you and I may want to talk outside this venue so you have a good
understanding of what the program does and how it works the database and
where all these costs you\'re talking about are. Anyway, I don\'t want
to discourage you from calling in. It\'s fun to know somebody\'s out
there listening. What we\'re going to do, let\'s just look at a screen
for a minute. Let\'s go to wages, the wages and supply screen on the
computer. Let\'s go up ‑‑ it\'s on the data entry menu. You hit wages
and supplies, and you\'ll have a screen pop up. There are three types
of ‑‑ three ways to enter information into our program, three different
types of entry, I should say. Again, this may be basic for some of you,
but it may not be. Particularly when this is a custom program. So the
familiarity with this type of entry may not be what\' used to. Let\'s
back up a little bit. These things are written in a code called Visual
Basic. They\'re Windows in ‑‑ in Windows application code. Some of the
coding ‑‑ some of the way the screens work, that sort of thing, are
standard package things that come with the program. A lot of them we
have to code in ourselves. If you work with windows much, a lot of this
will look kind of familiar. So we have three different types of entry.
We have numeric entry. Most of the cells you\'ll just type in a number
the cells will recognize any keystroke, the numeric cells, from 0 to 9,
1, 2, 3 to 9. They\'ll recognize the minus sign. They\'ll recognize the
comma, the decimal point. And if you want to change one of those cells,
you can either ‑‑ what\'s in those cells, you can either use the back
space key or the delete key to get rid of what\'s in there before you
type something in. When you enter a value into a cell, you don\'t really
have to worry about the format that you put it in. You don\'t have to
put a dollar sign in front of it or a comma in it anywhere. As you exit
the cell, the program will assign a format to that specific cell. So if
it\'s a cell with a cost entry, it will have a dollar sign in front of
it and commas every third thousand type thing, and it will put the
decimal place in automatically. Let\'s look at the screen for a second
that we\'re looking at. If you look at the bottom of that screen you\'ll
see ‑‑ in the bottom center, a text phrase that says \"insert\" right
now. What insert does, if you want to change a value in the cell, what
you need to do is delete what\'s in the cell using the back space for
the delete key, and then just type in the value you want. That\'s when
you\'re in insert mode. What \"insert\" means is that it\'s not going to
erase what\'s in there when you type a key. You\'ll see the cursor is in
the supervisor wage scale right there. If you\'re on insert key and you
wanted to make that \$124.39, you just press 1 on your keyboard ‑‑ oh,
look what it did. I\'m sorry. I\'m in typeover mode. The screen ‑‑
let\'s go to a different screen.

\>\> M. Shumaker: This might be a good opportunity for you to mention
the different types of data entry, the typeover and back space and so
forth.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I thought I was, but I don\'t even listen to myself
talk anymore. What we\'re going to do, let\'s go to site work, close
that. Go down to closures right here. Go up to ADITS. Press that. We\'ll
have a screen come up. It\'s a straightforward screen without any
information on it that all I want to talk about right now actually is
the types of data entry that we\'re talking about. As mat pointed out,
when you enter data you can either ‑‑ if there\'s a value in the screen
you can type over it, and the way to change that, and you can see we are
in typeover mode, there is a label in the bottom center of the screen
that says typeover. Now, to change that to insert mode, you go to your
keyboard, press the insert key, and it will change. What that means is
that you\'re typing in either a blank cell now or you\'re adding to
information that\'s already in that cell. If you press the key again,
you\'ll go to typeover mode, and then whatever is in the cell, you can
just type right over it. Most people just work in typeover mode. That is
the default mode of the program.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'ve got a question in from Bill in Pocatello. Bill,
good to hear from you.

\>\> Caller: Nice to hear from you.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Sound like there\'s an echo. So when you push the
button on your push‑to‑talk, does it mute your television?

\>\> Caller: No, it doesn\'t. I\'m on the cell phone.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s right. That would be. Because the phone call
came in. Can you walk out of the room to finish the call?

\>\> Caller: Can do. My question is now that we\'re entering data, is
there an undo key or edit undo type of key?

\>\> S. Stebbins: You guys are always way ahead of me here. Yes. If you
look on the screen in the lower left‑hand corner of every screen is a
button with an R on it. That\'s a reset button. When you press that, it
should get rid of everything on the screen and you\'ll be able to move
forward and reenter any data you want to try again.

\>\> Caller: Thank you very much.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Also, I just got a comment in from BLM in Las Vegas,
and Mark has had to do this a number of times, so I think this is worth
listening to. Mark is telling us BLM won\'t know who the contractor is,
so adjusting the operating efficiencies beyond the standard efficiencies
in the program is probably not a good idea.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I warrant argue with that one way or another. I
empathize with the caller. I think, Mark, you\'re probably right. But I
empathize with the caller. I know a few of you are frustrated with a
program like this because you know there are things that you want to
change that are beyond the scope of this. That\'s the guys that are
using the spreadsheets. Like I say, I\'m going to discourage use the of
that at all. So I understand the desire to do that. If you use any of
our other cost estimating software programs you\'ll notice you can
adjust most of those things you\'re talking about. But again this is a
little different thing. We\'re talking about what it will cost the
contractor to do it and the value of the bond you\'re going to have to
‑‑ I\'m putting that wrong. You know what I mean. Let\'s take this
moment and tell you ‑‑ make sure you know exactly what you\'re getting
here as far as programming goes, and a couple of you have run into this,
I know. I\'m an engineer, and I\'m a cost estimator, and programming is
a secondary thing to, but I work hard as doing it as best I k but I\'m
one guy, and this ‑‑ a program like this, I don\'t know, has a come
hundred thousand lines of ‑‑ come hundred thousand lines of code in it.
There are going to be bugs in the program. There are a couple ways to
handle bugs in the program. One, you guys should know this if you don\'t
already, there\'s a feature where you can trap errors when you write
computer code. What would happen if this program was running through and
it came upon an error, if I trapped it, what would happen is would it
just ignore that line of code and go right to the next code. So you
would never get an error statement. Or you also might run into would it
give you an answer that you wouldn\'t know if it was the wrong answer or
not. So we don\'t trap the errors in the program. If you come across an
error or if it ‑‑ the program does something that seems unusual to do, I
mean, we just actually found an error, of course, that had to happen on
camera, you need to let me know about it and, of course, I will fix it,
but the way to make this program is as good as I can make it is for any
errors you find to let me know about it. I\'m defensive about it, okay,
but I\'m not going to apologize for the fact that every once in a while
the program is going to bomb. I can make my calculator bomb. I\'m one
guy, and really to debug this entirely would take me months and months
and months, and we also want to keep the programs affordable. And we
want to get them out there. So, yes, in a way you\'re being used as part
of the test ‑‑ the beta thing, although this is far beyond being a beta
program, of course, but we want you to know the level of work that goes
into the programming versus the level that goes into the cost
estimating. We spend most of our time on cost estimating, I do. I think
this would be an appropriate time to talk about problems you might run
into in any of our programs. We do a series of calculations in our
programs. We start at one point, it does a calculation, we go ‑‑ it
spits that calculation onto the screen. You can change that calculation.
Then we go to the next point. It spits out a calculation. So there\'s a
series of calculations. Now, if you start at the end, if you enter a
value at the end, the program is going to take that value and do some
work with it, and if there are no values entered in front of it, every
once in a while you\'ll get a division by zero error. I have tried to
trap every one of these, and trap meaning I go into the program and say,
if ‑‑ a simple if statement, if the if the value before it is equal to
zero, then don\'t do the calculation and let you know about it. So
that\'s the ‑‑ the most likely error you\'re going to run into is that
type of error.

\>\> S. Murrellwright: Is there a sequence, Scott, you need to do in
putting in the data?

\>\> S. Stebbins: The best way is to just start at the start and work
through the program from the top of the menu to the bottom, then over to
the next menu and down through it that way, and when you get to a
screen, the way to probably really ensure you won\'t get an error
message is to work from the top left of the screen through to the bottom
right of the screen. But as I say, we do our best to make sure that if
you go to the fourth entry and enter something, the value, you know,
before you enter the information in front of it, it shouldn\'t bomb. It
shouldn\'t do a division by zero error, but there are literally
thousands of those calculations in these programs, so sometimes we miss
one, and there\'s also a lot of calculations where something is raised
to a certain power, and if you raise zero to a negative or something,
you might get an error. But that\'s one of the problems that you might
run into software‑wise. Another one I\'m going to get into to in a
minute. We should go with what we have here, and I\'ll show you about
this error as we\'re talking about the option list boxes, which are the
second method of data entry into a ‑‑ into the program.

\>\> M. Shumaker: What should people be looking at on screen right now
their offices? I\'m starting to lose track of whether we\'re on a slide
or computer screen capture.

\>\> S. Stebbins: It is my special way of instructing to make sure that
you never nowhere we are, because ‑‑ let\'s not go there. Go to your
menu, and up on the data entry menu, go to earthwork. We are on the
computer screens right now. So click on earthwork. Let\'s look at load
haul dump. I 30\'s some data in there for the tutorial.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s one of my favorite operations.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Mine, too. An option list box is this box in the lower
left‑hand corner of your screen. Now, the way ‑‑ follow with me here. Go
to job number 5, which is in the center there. You see the cursor there?
Click on that, and I think we should get a blank screen, and we do.
You\'ll see there\'s nothing up here in the loader thing up there. So to
use an option text box, all you have to do, and here we have the option
list box for these cells up here, just click on the machine you want. If
you want a wheel loader as opposed to a crawler loader or hydraulic
shovel, just click on wheel Lord and it will show up in that box. The
reason we do it this way is the code has to be able to recognize the
machine we\'ve selected in order to query the database properly. It
needs to be able to read a text string. So we don\'t let you just type
in a free form entry in these cells because you might type in something
that we haven\'t anticipated that you might type in and the program
won\'t know where to look in the database to find the associated
information. Once you select, this is mainly for mobilization purposes
and project efficiency purposes, once you select a machine, you it is
echoed into this text box right here. So you can use machine that
you\'ve already selected for a number of different operations. The way
to do is that a little different. This is the only place in the program
where this will show up. You don\'t just click on the machine that you
want here. You click on it to highlight it, and then you move down to
the select bottom and click on select and you\'ll see it will show up in
the hauler box when we do that. That truck, the first truck we selected
way back when in the tutorial is echoed into that box.

\>\> M. Shumaker: It\'s important that you keep track you\'re using
truck number 1 and wheel loader number 1 or wheel loader number 2.
Otherwise you may inadvertently tell the program that you\'re going to
have 12 different trucks and only be using one of them at a time.
That\'s not the way the real world operates.

\>\> S. Stebbins: That\'s exactly so. That\'s why we have set it up this
way. But this is a tricky bit of programming from my aspect, is to be
able to have this list of equipment available and to be able to bring
these pieces back and use them anywhere, and you might run into a
problem with that, but where you really might run into a program, and as
much work as we\'ve done on the code, I still don\'t feel comfortable
we\'ve got it sorted out, is when you want to remove a piece of
equipment in that little remove button down there. It will undoubtedly
bump out the piece of equipment that you\'ve selected, that you want to
get rid of. It will leave the machines you want to be left there. But
I\'m not sure, every once in a while I get a machine with a number that
doesn\'t correspond just written to the screen. It\'s still the same
machine. All I\'m saying is, this is what I\'m saying, why I didn\'t say
it when I just started, I don\'t know, what I\'m saying is, when you\'re
working through these screens, take your time. Just be careful. Select a
machine ‑‑ you know, this isn\'t AOL, but one thing you should have
learned from AOL or almost any other program, if you go bouncing around,
things can get a little messed up, and it\'s very true with custom
software that\'s limited use software. Take your time and work through
these things slowly. Try not to have to go backwards. Again, on this
screen, like all of them, we have the reset button and that should get
rid of machines you\'ve selected in these box here, including wheel
loader number 2, but it\'s important ‑‑ this goes back to the way you
should use software like this. You should do the work you need to do
ahead of time before you start entering the data. You should have an
idea of what machines you\'re going to use. If you want to use this as a
design tool to look at the differences of various machines, you should
create a file for each variation. If you want to try this with 6.5 yard
loader and see what the costs are and then try it again with a 5 yard
loader, make a different file. It doesn\'t take that long. Make a
different file for each one of these. What I often find when people use
my programs is ‑‑ well, particularly the other ones, we\'ll get a call
from BIAFRA and the guy needs to know the cost of an underground mine by
4:00 in the afternoon and can I somehow or another e‑mail the program to
him so can he somehow learn to use it, do an entire proper evaluation
and get the number to somebody by 4:00 in the afternoon, and that\'s
just not the way it works. This is still going to be a lot of work for
you. And the reliability of your results is based on the work you put
into it before you start using the program.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Keep in mind also when you\'re using this program on
your computer, and don\'t ask me how I know this, when you\'re using
this program, don\'t run lots of stuff concurrently with it. Don\'t run
lots of other programs with it. Actually, I\'ll tell you how I know
this. When I was working through the tutorial, I tried to run an optical
character recognition program in the background. The results were
brutal.

\>\> S. Stebbins: I don\'t even know what that\'s about. I think
probably that optical recognition program probably uses tons of memory
and may have bounced ‑‑ there\'s things your computer called stacks
where the memory is stored that you\'ve ‑‑ of the programs you have
working, and we may have bumped out of one of the stacks.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We probably ought to move on. Are we still going to
stay with the load haul dump screen for a while ‑‑

\>\> Caller: How do you selectively remove an item of equipment.

\>\> S. Stebbins: You click on it with your cursor like this ‑‑ sorry,
can we go to the screen? We click on the machine where the cursor is
like that, we go down and hit remove. And it says ‑‑ gives you a
reminder when you remove a machine, it\'s removed from all the other
places you\'ve used that machine. So it gives you a little warning. If
you want to continue, you press that. I don\'t know what it looked like
before we did that. Did we lose that machine? No, we didn\'t. As I\'m
saying, it has to happen on camera. But that is the one place where we
can run into trouble, is we need to ‑‑ when you try to remove machines.
As I say, right now, be careful. I\'m not sure why it doesn\'t work
right now. It could be a number of things. Mainly the machine ‑‑ what we
did do is select another wheel loader. We had ‑‑ allow me to think for a
moment. That is probably what has happened here, is that we selected
wheel loader number 2, and I hit the reset button once, which removed
that from the screen, but it might not have removed that from the
memory. Then we\'re trying to remove a machine from the memory that\'s
used in several different places, and I think maybe what I\'ve done here
is just given the program too much to think about, and it\'s not ‑‑
it\'s either keeping wheel loader number 2 and ‑‑

\>\> M. Shumaker: I think this is a good object example ‑‑

\>\> S. Stebbins: Pardon me?

\>\> Caller: Look at job 5, not ‑‑

\>\> Caller: We\'re still there. I don\'t know if we can ‑‑ no ‑‑ I\'m
sorry. Always the embarrassing thing of trying to demonstrate on camera
is we\'re going to run into things like this. Actually the point was,
this is one of the places that\'s a little more confusing to the program
as far as the programming goes, and ‑‑

\>\> M. Shumaker: This is another reason to have all the unit operations
you\'ll need laid out in front of you as you start working with the
software and basically start at the top left and work to the bottom
right in every screen in a systematic matter and you\'re probably not
going to run into this kind of glitch.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Eventually you won\'t. I found this. My company and ‑‑
we\'re dedicated to make sure everything we find that\'s wrong we fix,
so this will be fixed.

\>\> M. Shumaker: It just has to happen in front of 5,000 people.

\>\> S. Stebbins: No, it couldn\'t happen when I\'m testing in the
office. Oh, it\'s a humbling world we live in. Humiliating, too.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We have a question from Helen Mary Johnson in
southwestern Colorado. Go ahead.

\>\> Caller: Here comes the echo. Is there any way to backtrack on your
keystrokes or undo the last step you had made?

\>\> S. Stebbins: One stroke at a time?

\>\> Caller: For instance you just removed this wheel loader and you
didn\'t mean to do it. In a lot of programs you have an undo step.

\>\> S. Stebbins: No, you\'re into Microsoft world there, I\'m afraid.
That\'s a little beyond what our capabilities are here. So, no, there\'s
no redo ‑‑ I mean, no undo/redo thing.

\>\> Caller: As long as I\'m here, let me ask you another question
related to that menu screen for the load haul dumb dump. You have in the
upper right‑hand corner options for putting in place density, swell
factor and evacuated ‑‑ excavated density. If I\'m working on a notice,
how do I know what the in place density is going to be for an area.

\>\> M. Shumaker: There\'s a question ‑‑ I got your question coming in
from Jeff Garrett few minutes ago and I noted it. We were going to get
to it when we got to that part of the screen. We can deal with it now.
The handbook for mineral examiners, which is BLM manual section H as in
Henry 3890‑1 has some general standard bulk densities that you can use
if you\'re kind of throwing a brick at it or just making an average.
Really, the best way to do it is get out and measure your own bulk
density, but when you\'re down at the back of the envelope or back of
the napkin stage, book values are acceptable to get going with. The
handbook for mineral examiners is just one source. There\'s lots of
places where you can look up the average percent swell for kind of
gravel, the average density of sand and gravel, this much gravel, that
much gravel, so forth. So those numbers are out there.

\>\> Caller: Which land book was that?

\>\> M. Shumaker: That would be BLM handbook H as in Henry 3890‑01.
That\'s 3890‑01 and that would be in the appendix and that\'s brand‑new
on the streets within the last six months.

\>\> Caller: Great. Thank you.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Does the Caterpillar handbook still have that
information?

\>\> M. Shumaker: Probably. We have a Caterpillar handbook on the Elmo.
The cat handbook has a whole lot of information.

\>\> S. Stebbins: And there\'s a book by church called the excavation
handbook you could look up on the internet. There are several sources of
that information. By the way, if you enter a bulk density and a percent
swell, and Bob Lewis pointed out I have swell factor there and what
we\'re actually talking about is percent swell, we\'ll change that
label, the program will calculate the excavated density.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re going to disconnect your line now unless you
have a follow‑on to that question.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Thanks for the question.

\>\> M. Shumaker: We\'re down to about seven minutes and change and
we\'re starting to run a little behind now. So ‑‑ or if not a little
behind, we\'re just barely on schedule. Let\'s keep going, Scott.

\>\> S. Stebbins: The other type of entry ‑‑ so there\'s two types of
entries. There is the numeric entry. There\'s the option list box entry.
And the third type is just free form text entries. There are only,
really, two places where this occurs. One is in the job label boxes,
which we\'ll talk about later, those are key boxes, but in a free‑form
text entry box you just type in anything you want and the program will
really accept anything you type in.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Mark Gingrich sent us a good question from Winnemucca,
and that question is what do we do when more than one truck is required
for the same job. An example, one loader is used to fill three trucks
because the haul distance requires multiple trucks for job efficiency.

\>\> S. Stebbins: You bring up ‑‑ that\'s a great question. But the way
the program is laid out is we are not all that concerned with how many
trucks are there. We are going to end up ‑‑ because we don\'t have to
buy them. We need to know how many hours, the overall hours, that the
trucks are used. So it\'s not that big a concern. You can add other
trucks if you want to using this the way we have it set up here, but in
the situation you\'re talking about, what we need to know is how many
hours the trucks are used. So it doesn\'t matter if ‑‑ in this case ‑‑
your point is great if you\'re doing a cost estimate for a mine where
you need to know how many trucks you have to purchase but we\'re hiring
a contractor and he\'s going to charge us a fee, and it\'s based on how
many hours he\'s going to have to operate his trucks. The total number
of hours. So once we get to the results screen, you\'ll see that ‑‑
here, let\'s go here. We want to move to the right with the next key,
the lower right‑hand corner of our load haul dump screen. We have no
information here, sorry, this is ‑‑ we\'ve managed ‑‑ oh, we hit the
reset button so all those screens are reset. But if you hit next again,
hit next again, you\'ll end up in the final screen in echelon there, and
that entry right there, rear dump trucks will have the total number of
hours the trucks have to operate. Doesn\'t have to be one truck. The
trucks have to operated to this job. Now, the point you bring up, which
is a good point, which is a good point, if it\'s a piece of machinery
that needs to be hauled to the site, then we need to worry about
mobilization costs but you\'ll see how to adjust those later on in the
day. That\'s a great question. Does that answer it?

\>\> M. Shumaker: Mark, actually sent me the question by e‑mail.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Mark, if it didn\'t answer it, send him another
e‑mail. We\'ll try to do another better job.

\>\> M. Shumaker: Apparently Winnemucca is participating but their
push‑to‑talk system isn\'t working. But, anyway, carry on. Also the
question about the handbook for mineral examiners, as I understand it,
we can put that up on the screen with the handbook number. There it is.

\>\> S. Stebbins: Let me ask you this, on the camera here, how much time
do you need to wrap up?

\>\> M. Shumaker: I can wrap up in no time at all or as much as you
want. So let\'s keep going. We have about three minutes. See where you
can get in that period of time then we\'ll power down.

\>\> S. Stebbins: let\'s go back to our computer screen for a minute and
show you the other place where you can enter free‑form text entries.
Let\'s hit that previous button in the lower left‑hand corner of this
screen. Hit it again on this screen. Go back to the menu on this screen.
Close this earthwork submenu. Go to very front here. Hit project title.
Then this screen is another screen where all these entries are free form
text entries with the exception of the date, although you can type over
the date that\'s in there. This information is just things that are
labels, text labels, that will be ‑‑ appear on your printouts and on
subsequent screens so you can keep track of which project you\'re
working in or which run of a particular project you\'re working on.

\>\> M. Shumaker: That\'s very important, if it\'s the first try, second
try, fifth version, whatever, you will want to keep track.

\>\> S. Stebbins: At the bottom of the screen is the date. This is one
thing we may want to talk about how you would best like to handle this.
When you enter screen, it automatically enters the current date off your
computer, and that may not be what you want to do when you\'re
evaluating projects. Although if you want to put the original date your
analysis in, you could enter it in the analysis box. If you want to keep
the current date, you may have to type over this date that\'s
automatically put in there. We\'re at a stopping point probably. We need
to go to the utilities next, and that\'s a several page ‑‑

\>\> M. Shumaker: This is probably the best point to break for our hour
break. I do have a question that Mark Gingrich sent us my e‑mail. I
would like to congratulate everybody who is with us today who has been
able to get SHERPA program up and running in front of them and also be
on the network because Mark went ahead and wanted to see about signing
up for the mine cost estimation course only to find that he couldn\'t
find it on DOI Learn. So actually because of kind of a strange artifact
in the way DOI Learn works, we\'ve listed the mine and beneficiation
cost estimation course as part of the CME training. Now, we call this
Mine Costimation, but if you want to look it up on DOI Learn and sign up
for it, you want to use the course number that\'s showing on the bottom
of the screen right now. If you still can\'t find it, use the search
function in DOI Learn and look under Mining claim validity and you\'ll
get three options to pick from. This course is the second course in the
mining mineral examiner sequence but as I mentioned a little while ago
you don\'t have to be a mineral examiner We\'re going to go off the air
and we\'re going to take a break of about an hour, and depending on your
time zone, we\'ll be back ‑‑ well, time zone or not, we\'ll be back in
an hour at the top of the hour, and there will be a five‑minute signal,
I guess, for testing before we come back up. So, take a break, stretch
your legs. We\'re going to do the same. We\'ll see you back in an hour.