Fluor Daniel Hanford has taken a small Richland engineering consulting office under its wing to help the company find more work.

Fluor and H&R Technical Associates signed a "mentoring agreement" Friday in which Fluor will provide free advice and other help to H&R Technical Associates, which has an 8-person office.

"We have a lot to learn, and (Fluor Daniel Hanford) has generously agreed to teach us," said Ann Hansen, chief executive officer and co-founder of the firm.

This is the second two-year mentor-protege relationship a Fluor company has entered with a Richland firm.

Last spring, Fluor Daniel Northwest signed a similar agreement with E2 Consulting Engineers of Richland.

The program is patterned after a similar Fluor effort at Fernald.

When Fluor Daniel won the Hanford management contract two years ago, it announced it would set up a mentoring program as part of its economic development efforts.

However, complications of Fluor settling in during its first year put the program on hold, said Betty Hubbard, manager of Fluor Daniel Hanford's Supplier Advocacy Office. It took much of Fluor's second year to design the program, get Department of Energy approval and sort through applicants.

Under the program, several Mid-Columbia small businesses -which must be owned by women, minorities or other disadvantaged groups - applied for Fluor Daniel Hanford's help. The winner had to have a good track record with a desire to expand.

The winner is not guaranteed any Fluor contracts, although it will be invited to bid.

H&R Technical Associates was founded in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1980. It opened a Richland office in 1990. Most of its 40 employees are in Oak Ridge. So far, its clients are at various DOE sites.

It handles safety analyses, environmental compliance analyses and other consulting work at Hanford.

But the company wants to expand beyond serving DOE sites, and is looking for consulting jobs in agriculture, defense and other fields, Hansen said.

H&R Technical Associates' lack of familiarity with the non-DOE business world prompted it to seek Fluor's mentorship, she said.

Fluor Daniel Hanford plans to stick with just one mentor-protege relationship for the first two years.

It will decide whether to expand the program after the second year.

Fluor Daniel Northwest's mentor rela tion with E2 Consulting Engineers began in May.

Founded in California in 1989, E2 opened a four-person Richland office 2 1/2 years ago to do environmental, water and waste water engineering consulting work at Hanford, Puget Sound shipyards and Boeing.

The now-50-person office wants to expand more, said E2's Northwest regional manager, Gus Myers.

Myers praised the mentor program, saying Fluor Northwest helped his office learn how to have a structured "firm game plan" on conducting business rather than reacting from situation to situation.