KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- Since last school year, Hickory Construction has helped stimulate learning by gutting and re-habbing the teaching pods at Alcoa Elementary School.

Over the next year, it wll get more than $6.2 million in stimulus work to build greenhouses and a 3-story maintenance facility for UT Batelle in Oak Ridge.

"Our residential division is a little off." says Hickory's CEO Burke Pinnell.

"So because we're set up with a commercial division, this project is very good. It picks up the slack."

The Oak Ridge Reservation build-out promise to create
1500 short or long-term jobs the next several years.

"It'll give us a couple of jobs," Pinnell says,

"And we'll hire a least a dozen, probably 15 or 20 sub-contractors over the course of the work.

Pinnell expects that sub-contractors, and Hickory's workers, will shuttle among several projects, so it's difficult to calculate how many jobs the stimulus work will create.

"A lot of the jobs that were part of the stimulus were one year, one term jobs, so there's one season of work," Maryland contractor Mark Compton told CBS News last Friday

"By this time next year, it turns to drought," says economist Mark Zandi.

"The bottom line is, we have no idea how many jobs will be created without the stimulus, says Maya MacGuineas, of the advocacy group Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget.

Pinnell is certain that Hickory's stimulus project means he can keep his people working--and maybe, open new lines--of business.

"We certainly would be open to more government work," he says.

"It's pretty nice to be flexible."