Hanford's work force has steadily shrunk under Fluor Daniel's stewardship.

As was expected.

Belt-tightening by the federal government has forced the 13 companies under Fluor's umbrella to shrink from 8,269 people to 6,239 in two years.

But Fluor also has a contractual obligation to help the Tri-Cities cushion these probably inevitable job losses by helping create new jobs that don't depend on Hanford.

And that obligation is being met, the Department of Energy and Fluor officials say.

Fluor was supposed to help create 200 non-Hanford jobs in its first year, and to add enough new jobs in the second year to hit the 500 mark by Sept. 30, 1998.

The first year's tally was 201. The tentative tally over two years is 527 jobs that were created from efforts shared by Fluor with the Tri-City Industrial Development Council and other interests.

Most of those jobs came from a new titanium manufacturing plant owned by International Hearth Melting (formerly known as Oremet), a new Twin City Foods plant and some new Fluor Daniel Northwest business.

Both Fluor President Ron Hanson and DOE Hanford Manager John Wagoner voiced confidence that DOE will verify that Fluor has hit the 500-job goal.

But Hanson and Wagoner expressed disappointment that a key portion of the job creation effort - the so-called "enterprise" companies - have not been able to attract outside business and jobs as well as hoped.

When Fluor took over Hanford from Westinghouse Hanford Co. in October 1996, it split a three-company Westinghouse team into 13 firms.

Seven companies are Fluor's basic "inside the fence" team, and those seven companies have shrunk from 6,035 employees to 5,147 in two years.

The other six are the enterprise companies. Although they mostly operate as Fluor subcontractors, they also are supposed to drum up outside work to grow somewhat independent of Hanford.

Instead, Hanford budget cuts have trimmed the enterprise work force from 2,234 to 1,902 in two years. Not enough new non-Hanford enterprise company jobs have been created to offset the Hanford-related losses, Wagoner and Hanson said.

Maybe 100 to 150 enterprise jobs could be counted toward the second-year job creation goal of 500 non-Hanford jobs, various Hanford figures indicate.

The enterprise companies' presidents all have been disappointed in how slowly their firms have won non-Hanford work.

But they point out it is tough for new companies to grow fast in the highly competitive non-Hanford world. The firms also are still trying to land the one big contract that would create some momentum for growth.

The biggest example of the problem has been Fluor Daniel Northwest - which handles construction management, architectural and engineering work at Hanford.

Federal budget cuts and the completion of some big projects have trimmed its work force from 1,308 in 1996 to 899 in early October. It has found just enough outside work to create a few dozen non-Hanford jobs.

"Fluor Daniel Northwest has not blossomed as promised," said George Kyriazis, vice chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board.

But the shrinking work force at some of the Hanford companies is expected to be offset by rapid growth at BNFL Inc., a new prime contractor at Hanford that is outside of Fluor's team.

The company and its three subcontractors are in charge of building and operating plants to convert Hanford's tank wastes into glass.

BNFL's team was essentially a handful of office staff members and engineers in late 1996. On Sept. 30, 1998, the team had 111 people.

And the company hopes to grow to 270 by Dec. 31, and possibly to 400 by mid-1999.

Ultimately, BNFL expects to employ about 2,000 people in the next decade as it builds the waste glassification plants.

When the plants are completed in nine to 10 years, the permanent work force is expected to be about 600.