Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest construction and civil engineering company in the United States, and the 9th-largest privately owned American company in 2016. Its headquarters are in the South of Market, San Francisco.
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History
Founding and early years
Bechtel's business activities began in 1898 when cattle farmer Warren A. Bechtel moved from Peabody, Kansas, to the Oklahoma Territory to construct railroads with his own team of mules. Bechtel moved his family frequently between construction sites around the western United States for the next several years, eventually moving to Oakland, California in 1904, where he worked as the superintendent on the Western Pacific Railroad. In 1906, W. A. Bechtel won his first subcontract to build part of the Oroville-to-Oakland section of the Western Pacific Railroad. That same year, he bought his own steam shovel, becoming a pioneer of the new technology. He painted "W.A. Bechtel Co." on the side of the steam shovel, effectively establishing Bechtel as a company, though it was not yet incorporated.
Bechtel completed work on a series of railroad contracts during the early 1900s, culminating in an extension of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad finished in 1914.
Starting with the construction of Klamath River Highway in California in 1919, Bechtel ventured into jobs outside of building railroads. The company built roads, bridges, and highways throughout the western United States. The company worked on its first hydroelectric projects in the 1920s for Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California.
By the time Bechtel incorporated in 1925, it was the leading construction company in the western United States. In 1929, Warren's son, Stephen, urged his father to take on the company's first pipeline project. Bechtel began working with California Standard Oil Company to build pipelines and refineries.
In January 1931, Bechtel joined other contractors in the west to form Six Companies, Inc., a consortium created to bid for a contract from the US government to construct the Hoover Dam. Six Companies won the bid in March and construction on the dam began in the summer of 1931.
WWII, overseas expansion and the nuclear age
Warren Bechtel died unexpectedly in 1933 while in Moscow on business. He was succeeded by his son, Stephen Bechtel, Sr., who became both the head of Bechtel and chief executive of the Hoover Dam project. Under his leadership, the Hoover Dam was finished in 1935. The project was the largest of its kind in US history at the time and Bechtel's first megaproject.
During World War II, the United States Maritime Commission invited the company to bid for a contract to build half of their order of 60 cargo ships. The company had no prior experience in shipbuilding, but bid for the entire 60 ships. Between 1941 and 1945, Bechtel's wartime shipyards, including Marinship and Calship, built 560 vessels. Bechtel also worked on a pipeline from the Yukon to Alaska called Canol for the United States Department of War during this time period.
Under Stephen Bechtel, Sr., the company diversified its projects and expanded its work into other countries. The company also focused on turnkey projects, a concept Stephen Bechtel, Sr. pioneered, in which Bechtel handled a project from planning and design through construction.
Bechtel's first job outside the US was building the Mene Grande pipeline in Venezuela in 1940. In 1947, Bechtel began construction on what was then the world's longest oil pipeline, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, which began in Saudi Arabia, ran across Jordan and Syria, and ended in Lebanon. The company continued to expand globally throughout the 1940s, particularly in the Middle East.
In 1949, Bechtel began working with nuclear power after being contracted to build the Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho. The company later built the Dresden Generating Station, the first commercial nuclear power plant, for Commonwealth Edison in Illinois in 1957.
Other major projects in the 1950s included the Trans Mountain Pipeline in 1952, an oil pipeline in Canada, and a preliminary study for the English Channel in 1959. Bechtel also began engineering work on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in 1959.
Megaprojects era
Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. took over for his father as president of the company as Stephen Bechtel, Sr. retired in 1960. During the 1960s and 1970s, Bechtel was involved in constructing 40 percent of the nuclear plants in the United States. In 1968, the company completed the largest nuclear plant in the US at the time, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, in California. In 1972, Bechtel was involved in approximately 20 percent of all of the United States' new power-generating capacity. By the end of the decade, the company had moved from nuclear power construction toward nuclear cleanup projects, including Three Mile Island in 1979.
Bechtel completed work on other megaprojects during the 1970s, including major airports in Saudi Arabia and the metro rail in Washington, D.C. In 1976, the company began work on the industrial city of Jubail in Saudi Arabia. The company's multiple construction contracts helped to transform the area from a small village to a city with a population of over a quarter of a million people.
In the 1980s, Bechtel handled the project management of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. The company also built the Ankara-Gerede Motorway in Turkey as part of the network of roadways linking Europe and Asia in 1986.
In 1987, Bechtel was awarded a contract for project management services of an undersea tunnel linking the UK and France called the Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel." The tunnel was completed in 1994.
Increased business and visibility
The recession of the 1980s turned the company's focus toward new areas of growth including environmental cleanup and alternative energy projects. In 1989 Riley Bechtel was named president of the company.
In 1991, Bechtel, in a joint venture with Parsons Brinckerhoff, broke ground on Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel Project or "Big Dig," a project the company had been in charge of since 1986. The Big Dig was, at the time, the largest and most complex urban transportation project ever undertaken in the United States. The 20-year project was critiqued for rising costs and an increasing scope of work, as the Big Dig became more complex than was originally estimated. Criticism of the project increased in 2005 when a leak sprang in one of the new tunnels. In the summer of 2006, a faulty tunnel ceiling panel collapsed, killing a motorist. Litigation ensued, and in January 2008, Bechtel settled with federal and state officials for $352 million with other contractors involved paying smaller amounts.
As a result of the Gulf war, Bechtel took on the task of extinguishing oil well fires in Kuwait in 1991. This was part of the overall effort to rebuild the infrastructure of Kuwait.
In 1994, Bechtel began work on the US$20 billion Hong Kong Airport Core Programme, which was the largest civil engineering project at the time and included a new airport and nine other infrastructure projects. Bechtel's other major projects during the 1990s included the Athens Metro system, the Atlantic LNG in Trinidad, the Croatian Motorway, the Jubilee Line Extension for the London Underground, Quezon Power Plant in the Philippines, and a semiconductor plant in China. Bechtel also managed design and construction of facilities for Olympic games: the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, and the Winter games in Nagano, Japan in 1998. In the early 2000s, the company provided planning and management services for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In 2001, Bechtel was part of a consortium to project manage the US$4.3 billion construction of the CSPC Nanhai Petrochemicals Complex in China.
Several projects in the 2000s attracted controversy. In 2000, after a protest against water prices being raised by a utility partially owned by Bechtel in Bolivia, the company pulled out of the country and later filed suit against Bolivia for $25 million in losses. The claim was settled in 2006 for $0.30.
In 2001, Bechtel began work on the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford site in Washington state. The project is a highly complex plant for the treatment of radioactive liquid waste that has employed new technologies and construction techniques that are the first of their kind. As of 2013, it is considered the most complex project in the United States. Management of the project has been the subject of controversy including Department of Energy's Inspector General reports and Government Accountability Office studies regarding rising costs, nuclear safety and quality, and whistleblower allegations. For example, in 2013 the DOE Inspector General concluded that "Bechtel determined that there was a systemic problem and a breakdown in controls over the review of design changes", but that the company had taken steps to correct the problems.
In 2003, Bechtel won a $680 million contract to begin rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq for U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract led to the company being accused of both non-competitive bidding and war profiteering. Bechtel won a competitively-bid second contract in January 2004, and completed 97 of 99 task orders of the contract, returning the two remaining projects due to the escalating security concerns in the country.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Bechtel was one of four companies hired by FEMA to build temporary housing. Bechtel delivered over 35,000 trailers in under a year for displaced residents in Mississippi, though the company was criticized by officials and in the media for the cost and quality of work.
In 2007, Bechtel began work on the Romanian A3 motorway (Autostrada Transilvania) and Albanian motorways. Bechtel and the Romanian National Roads Authority jointly agreed on a settlement to end the contract for works on the Autostrada Transilvania in 2013. The Albanian Motorway was opened to traffic in 2010 on schedule.
Other major projects at the end of the 2000s included the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, Jamnagar Refinery expansion in India, Equatorial GuineaLNG, and Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin.
Marine Construction Projects Video
Locations and operational activities
Bechtel's major operational locations are in Brisbane, Calgary, Dubai, Frederick, Maryland, Houston, London, New Delhi, Reston, Virginia, San Francisco, Santiago, Shanghai, Nairobi, Taipei, and Washington, D.C.
The company's main headquarters are located at its San Francisco office, while the Reston office houses the company's global operational headquarters, as well as the headquarters of the Nuclear, Security & Environmental global business unit and the North American offices of the Infrastructure global business unit. The company's Oil, Gas & Chemicals unit is based in the Houston office. The Washington office maintains both a Political Action Committee and a lobbying program.
Outside of North America, the Infrastructure unit's headquarters is located at the company's London office. The Mining & Metals unit is headquartered at the company's Brisbane office and also maintains operations in Santiago and Dubai. In 2013, the company established its global center of engineering excellence in Dubai focusing on rail and marine projects. It established innovation centers in Houston and London in 2015 to test new technology.
Bechtel works on global megaprojects through its four business units. The company frequently manages work from design through construction phases. Its corporate values include safety, quality, and ethics.
Infrastructure
The Infrastructure unit handles transportation, fossil and renewable power, transmission and communications. Infrastructure projects include highways and bridges, rail, ports, and aviation projects, as well as hydroelectric facilities. Bechtel has built more than 17,200 miles (27,700 km) of roadway, 390 individual power plants, 50 hydroelectric plants, as well as 20 towns and cities globally. It has worked on 300 subway and rail projects, 80 port and harbor projects, and 96 major airport projects.
Bechtel's Infrastructure unit is leading a consortium in the engineering, procurement and construction of the lines One and Two of the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia metro, which began construction in April 2014. Bechtel is also participating in the building of London's Crossrail, a $24 billion project that will connect commuter towns east and west of London and is intended to serve an estimated 200 million people a year upon completion. As of June 2015, the project is 65% complete.
Since 2015, it has been overseeing the project management of the Spadina subway extension for the Toronto Transit Commission. In 2016, Bechtel began construction on the first stage of the Edmonton Valley Line Light Rail Transit project in Alberta, Canada, the first under P3 (private-public partnership) business group.
The unit is involved in several ongoing projects as of 2016, including building national infrastructure in Gabon and the continuous development of Jubail in Saudi Arabia. It is also building projects for Google Fiber in several markets in the Southeastern U.S.
Power projects in 2016 include natural gas-fired combined cycle facilities for Panda Power Funds: the Panda Hummel Station Power Plant in Pennsylvania and the Stonewall Energy Center in Virginia. For Advanced Power, Bechtel is working on three combined cycle plants, South Field Energy and Carroll County Energy in Ohio, and Cricket Valley Energy in New York. It is also building the Keeyask Generating Station, a hydroelectric power plant for Manitoba Hydro in Manitoba, Canada.
Among recently completed projects, Bechtel finalized Phase I of an extension of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail in Northern Virginia and completed the Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar in 2014. It completed a 17.4 kilometres (10.8 mi) four-lane motorway in Kosovo, which was finished a year ahead of schedule in November 2013, and was selected to build a new 37-mile motorway linking Kosovo's capital, Pristina, to Macedonia.
Bechtel's completed renewable projects include the world's largest solar thermal project, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California, which began producing power in February 2014 and has the capacity to double solar thermal power production in the United States. The unit also completed the Catalina Solar photovoltaic generating facility and the construction of the California Valley Solar Ranch in 2013.
In August 2013, the unit completed the Hanna Region Transmission Development, a power transmission project in Canada, which included 1,200 new transmission towers and 219 kilometres (136 mi) of transmission lines.
Mining & Metals
The Mining & Metals (M&M) unit works on projects related to the mining and production of materials such as aluminum, coal, copper, iron ore, alumina and other metals and minerals. The unit operates on six continents and has completed hundreds of major mining projects as well as more than 1,000 mining studies. It has also finished 42 major copper projects, 30 aluminum smelters, 15 major coal projects, and eight alumina refinery projects.
In 2013, the unit completed construction of Saudi Arabia's first aluminum smelter in Ras Al-Khair, the Daunia coal mine in Queensland, Australia, and the expansion of the Kooragang Coal Terminal in Port Waratah in Australia, increasing capacity to 145 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa).
That same year, M&M was chosen to provide the engineering, procurement, and construction of a water system and desalination plant for the Escondida copper mine in Chile.
In 2014, M&M completed the Caval Ridge coal mine in Queensland, and began operations at Escondida's OLAP copper cathode project, which consisted of a new dynamic leaching pad and a mineral handling system.
In 2015, the unit completed the Las Bambas copper concentrator in Peru for MMG, the Kitimat aluminum smelter in Canada for Rio Tinto Group., and the Escondida Organic Growth Project 1 (OGP1), the largest single-line copper concentrator ever built. It also completed a third berth for the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) at Hay Point Coal Terminal in Queensland, Australia, which increased export capacity from the existing 44 Mtpa to 55 Mtpa.
Bechtel began building the Al Taweelah alumina refinery (formerly Shaheen) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates for Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) in 2015.
In April 2016, Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) announced that Bechtel had been appointed Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Management (EPCM) contractor for the company's Line 6 Expansion Project. The initiative will make Alba the world's largest single-site aluminum smelter upon completion, boosting production to 1.5 Mtpa. That same month, Rio Tinto announced that Kitimat had reached full production levels of 420,000 tpa, while Las Bambas achieved commercial production in July 2016. As of 2016, Bechtel is advancing the Amrun bauxite initiative for Rio Tinto in Australia, which announced project approval in November 2015.
Oil, Gas & Chemicals
The Oil Gas & Chemical unit designs and builds liquefied natural gas (LNG), oil, pipeline, petrochemicals, and natural gas facilities. Since the company's founding, it has built approximately 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of pipeline systems, more than 50 major oil and gas field developments, and completed over 380 major chemical and petrochemical projects. The unit also constructs and tests tanks for LNG storage. Bechtel is overseeing a third of the world's LNG liquefaction capacity under construction.
Since 2011 the unit has been building three LNG plants on Curtis Island in Queensland, Australia. It completed the first of six trains in January 2016, and the project was named a 2016 Global Best Projects by Engineering News-Record in the category of "Power/Industrial". The unit is also constructing the Wheatstone project, a two-train LNG plant that is one of Australia's largest energy resource efforts.
Bechtel is responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction of five LNG trains for the Sabine Pass Liquefaction project in Louisiana. The initial cargo from the first completed train was delivered in 2016. As of 2016 the unit has completed approximately 36% of an LNG project in Corpus Christi, Texas, which includes three LNG trains, three LNG storage tanks, and two berths.
In May 2013, the unit was awarded a contract for the front-end engineering design of the Pacific NorthWest LNG in Vancouver, BC. In March 2014, the unit was awarded a contract to construct facilities in Georgia for the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan. In August 2015, Bechtel was contracted by Delfin LNG, to provide front-end engineering and design for a planned floating LNG vessel at Port Delfin off the coastline of Louisiana, which would be the first in the U.S. Also in 2015, the unit was awarded a contract to manage the engineering, procurement, and construction of 12 new natural-gas pipelines in Thailand.
In June 2013, Bechtel was named the project manager of a megapetrochemical complex in Qatar at the Ras Laffan Industrial City. The company was part of a consortium selected by PTT GC America in 2015 to provide front-end engineering and design for a new petrochemical complex in Belmont County, Ohio. It is also the lead contractor for a Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
Bechtel's technology was licensed for facility upgrades at the Rijeka Refinery in Croatia in February 2014. In 2016, the unit was contracted by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation to design an upgrade to the coker unit at the Assiut refinery in Egypt using its ThruPlus technology. Also in 2016, it was awarded a contract to upgrade a refinery in Beaumont, Texas for ExxonMobil, using ExxonMobil's proprietary SCANfining technology.
Nuclear, Security, & Environmental
The Nuclear, Security, & Environmental unit handles the company's government work and commercial nuclear businesses. The unit supports U.S. and international governmental organizations including the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy. Since the 1950s, Bechtel has designed, serviced, or delivered 80 percent of all nuclear plants in the U.S.
As of 2016, Bechtel leads a consortium that manages three national security-related facilities in the U.S.: the Los Alamos National Laboratory the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the combined Y-12 National Security Complex/Pantex Plant. Bechtel won numerous sustainability awards for its work with these facilities from the National Nuclear Security Administration, including twelve in 2016.
Bechtel has been contracted to manage the United States Navy's nuclear propulsion research facilities since 2011. In June 2013 the unit completed design and construction on a U.S. Missile Defense Agency project at Fort Greely, Alaska, which included three missile fields and forty silos. In 2014 the U.K. Ministry of Defence selected Bechtel to support the Royal Navy and Air Force on procurement and managed support services. Additionally, in 2016, Bechtel began providing testing and operations for the Arnold Engineering Development Complex at the Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee.
Other government work includes the construction of the facilities to treat the liquid radioactive waste stored underground at the Department of Energy's Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington. The unit also manages U.S. Department of Defense contracts to dismantle and dispose of stored chemical weapons, including decades-old mustard and nerve gas from World War II. It completed the construction of the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant as part of this work in 2015. Since May 2012, Bechtel has been part of a consortium completing the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement, a structure that will safely confine the damaged Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Number 4. As of 2016, It is a partner in Savannah River Remediation, the liquid waste contractor for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
In 2016, Bechtel completed work on Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar 2 nuclear reactor. It has been fulfilling an engineering, procurement and construction contract to replace three steam generators at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania since 2013. In May 2016, a joint venture including Bechtel won a contract to conduct front-end engineering and design for the eventual construction of Wylfa Newydd, a nuclear power station in Wales for Horizon Nuclear Power.
Management
Brendan Bechtel is CEO and Chairman and is the fifth generation of the Bechtel family to lead the company. Jack Futcher is president and chief operating officer. Peter Dawson has been chief financial officer since 2014.
Several high-ranking Bechtel executives at times held important positions in the United States government. Notably, Reagan's cabinet had two former Bechtel executives: Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz, serving as Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State respectively.
Financials and rankings
In 2016, Bechtel ranked ninth on Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies by revenue, and it was ranked 7th on Fortune's list of the 25 Most Important Private Companies. It has been named the top U.S. Contractor by revenue by Engineering News-Record for eighteen years in a row and ranked third on the publication's Top 250 International Contractors list by revenue for 2015.
Major projects
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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