CASE 345 - Bechtel

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 3rd-largest privately owned company in the U.S. With headquarters in the Financial District of San Francisco, As of 2010, Bechtel had $30.8 billion in revenue and employed 49,000 workers on projects in nearly 50 countries.
Bechtel participated in the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. It has also had involvement in a number of other high profile construction engineering projects: numerous power projects such as refineries and nuclear power plants; transportation projects including the Channel Tunnel, the BART system, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam (the largest Airport in the world by land area), Hong Kong International Airport and the Big Dig; and other projects such as the Kingdom Centre and Tower in Saudi Arabia, Jubail Industrial City, the rebuilding of the civil infrastructure of Iraq funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the hauling and installing of more than 35,000 trailers and mobile homes for Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi.



The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1945. It was set up by Warren Bechtel in 1898 as a rail road builder in the great railroad. Bechtel's size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a constant subject of scrutiny for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel owns and operates power plants, oil refineries, water systems, and airports in several countries including the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

U.S. Department of Energy

Effective October 1, 2007, the US Department of Energy awarded Bechtel partnership LLNS LLC the contract to operate Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Bechtel has a presence, through various partnerships, of the bulk of the US nuclear weapons facilities, including Los Alamos National Laboratory (design and pit production), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (design), Savannah River Site (nuclear materials), Hanford Site (nuclear materials), Pantex Plant (assembly/disassembly), Y-12 National Security Complex (nuclear materials), and the Nevada Test Site (subcritical testing).

U.S. Navy

Bechtel is under contract for the new A1B reactor, a nuclear reactor being designed for use by the United States Navy to provide electricity generation and propulsion for the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.



Executives

Riley P. Bechtel is the CEO of Bechtel. With a net worth of $3.2 billion, he is the 50th wealthiest person in the U.S. and the 127th richest in the world. In February 2003, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Export Council, which advises the president on international trade issues. He served for one year.
David O'Reilly serves on the Bechtel Group, Inc. board of directors and is the former chairman & CEO of Chevron.
George P. Shultz is the former U.S. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, former president of Bechtel, and a former Bechtel director. He is a former member of the board of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.
The late Caspar Weinberger served as the United States Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Prior to holding this position, Weinberger was the Vice President, Director, and General Counsel of the Bechtel Group of companies.
Gen. John J. Sheehan, USMC (ret.) is the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic and the former Special Advisor to Asia for the U.S. Defense Department and the former General Manager of the Petroleum and Chemical Business Unit for Europe/Africa/Middle East/South West Asia and was also a Bechtel partner. He was also a member of the Defense Policy Board.
Ross J. Connelly is the former CEO of Bechtel Energy Resources Corporation. He served on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation under George W. Bush.
W. Kenneth Davis is a former Bechtel senior vice-president and is the former U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary.
David Welch former assistant secretary of state under George W Bush.

Joint ventures and subsidiaries

Aguas del Tunari
Airport Group International Holdings, LLC
Alterra Partners
Alliance Bechtel-Linde
Alterra Partners (UK)
Amey inc (Tube Lines)
Arabian Bechtel Corporation
Bantrel Co. (Calgary)
BCN Data Systems (UK)
Bechtel Babcock and Wilcox Idaho, LLC
Bechtel Bettis, Inc.
Bechtel Canada, Inc.
Bechtel Capital Partners LLC
Bechtel China, Inc.
Bechtel CITIC Engineering, Inc. (China)
Bechtel COSAPI (Peru)
Bechtel Constructors Corporation
Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc. (BEn)
Bechtel Financing Services, LLC
Power Generation Engineering and Services Co. (PGESCo) (Egypt)
Bechtel Great Britain Ltd. (UK)
Bechtel Infrastructure Corporation (BINFRA)
Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC
Bechtel Hanford Inc.
Bechtel McCone Parsons Corporation; Engineers, Constructors
Bechtel Metodo Telecomunicacoes Ltda. (BMT) (Brazil)
Bechtel National Inc.
Bechtel Nevada Corporation
Bechtel Northern Corporation
Bechtel Overseas Corporation
Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff joint venture
Bechtel Petroleum, Inc. (U.S.A.)
Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc.
Bechtel Power Corp. (U.S.A.)
Bechtel SAIC LLC
Bechtel Savannah River, Inc.
Bechtel-Sigdo Koppers joint venture (Chile)
Bechtel-Technip Joint Venture
Becon Construction Company, Inc.
BPR-Bechtel
Bechtel Telecommunications
Cimtas Pipe Fab. & Trading Ltd. Co. Bechtel-ENKA Joint Venture (Turkey)
Cliffwood-Blue Moon Joint Venture, Inc.
Colstrip Energy LP
Dabhol Power Company (DBC), joint venture with General Electric and Enron (India)
Dual Drilling Company
Eastern Bechtel Co. Ltd.
EnergyWorks LLC
The Fremont Group
Incepta Group PLC
InterGen (joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell)
International Water
IPSI LLC
Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC
Lectrix
Lima Airport Partners
Los Alamos National Security, LLC
Marathon Oil Equatorial Guinea LNG
NetCon Thailand (joint venture with Lucent)
PSG International (partnership with General Electric)
Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company (Saudi Arabia)
Sequoia Ventures, Inc.
Spruce Limited Partnership
United Infrastructure Company (Chicago) (before Bechtel bought out its partner's share in 1998)
Technology Ventures Group
USGen Power Services, LP

Major projects

Hoover Dam completed in 1936
Bekme hydroelectric dam in Turkey completed in 1991
Petrochemical plants in Iraq completed in 1991
Dabhol Power Project Phase 1 completed in 1992
Kuwait reconstruction after the Gulf War completed in 1993
Channel Tunnel completed in 1994
Hong Kong International Airport completed in 1998
Tengiz Field expansion in Kazakhstan completed in 1999
Chemical weapons disposal facility in Anniston, Alabama completed in 2001
Three natural gas power plants in Turkey completed in 2002
Fissile Materials Storage Facility at Mayak, Ozersk, Russian Federation completed in 2002
Araucária Power project, Brazil completed in 2003
Jorge Chávez International Airport expansion in Lima, Peru completed in 2005
Big Dig completed in 2007
Rebuilding of sections of Croatian highway between Zagreb and Split completed in 2008
The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and enriched uranium storage facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee completed in 2009
Rrëshen-Kalimash Highway in Albania completed in 2010
New Doha International Airport due to be completed in 2011
New Muscat International Airport Terminal due to be completed in 2014
Transylvania Motorway due to be completed in 2016
Dulles Metrorail Extension due to be completed in 2016

Awards

For its contributions to the U.S.'s built environment, the company was presented with the Honor Award from the National Building Museum in 1998. At the ceremony, at which Stephen Bechtel, Jr. and Riley P. Bechtel accepted the award, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz said of the corporation, "Bechtel has been a wonderful ambassador around the world... No. 1, they're always there to solve problems - the world is full of critics, and what you want is people who are constructive, who are ready to solve problems."

Environmental record

On January 23, 1996, the Washington Department of Ecology fined Bechtel $5,000 for hazardous waste violations on an incident where a flying drum lid barely missed two workers due to the build-up of pressure inside a drum and improper closure operations.[50] The penalty was issued because of inadequate worker training which led to an incorrectly labeled drum. Inspections also discovered that Bechtel kept inaccurate records keeping of cleanup waste, which violated state regulations.
In 1998, Bechtel was fined $90,000 for violating water quality laws in New Hampshire for constructing a gas pipeline, which would have leaked sediments into the stream that would increase turbidity and damage wetland habitats.
On October 29, 2001, the EPA fined Bechtel $30,383 at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for not keeping records of any service being performed or of how much refrigerant was added to the cooling systems, which could increase annualized leak rates more than 15%.
In 2009, it was announced that Bechtel would team up with BrightSource Energy to build solar energy plants. The partnership will have Bechtel build very large solar power plants in the Mojave desert with groundbreaking beginning in 2010. The new plants will have a field of mirrors redirecting sunlight to a tower filled with water, which will then boil and turn the turbines.