Bechtel Corporation (/ˈbɛktəl/) is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia.
[10][13][14] 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 U.S. government to construct the Hoover Dam.
[9][14][15] 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 later built the United States' first privately financed commercial nuclear power plant, the Dresden Generating Station, for Commonwealth Edison in Illinois in 1957.
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.
[30] Litigation ensued, and in January 2008, Bechtel settled with federal and state officials for $352 million with other contractors involved paying smaller amounts.
[44] 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.
[44][45] Management of the project has been the subject of controversy including the Department of Energy's Inspector General reports and Government Accountability Office studies regarding rising costs, nuclear safety and quality, and whistleblower allegations.
[30] 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.
Bechtel and the Romanian National Roads Authority jointly agreed on a settlement to end the contract for works on the Autostrada Transilvania in 2013.
[51][52] Other major projects at the end of the 2000s included the twinning of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state,[53] Jamnagar Refinery expansion in India,[54] Equatorial GuineaLNG,[55] and Oak Creek Power Plant in Wisconsin.
With the strings attached in 1995, and the World Bank participating in draft bids in 1997, the Aguas del Tunari consortium were the only bidders for the auction.
The terms were ratified in the often-cited Law 2029 by the legislative body of Bolivia, however largely it had previously been accepted and influenced by local governments.
The aftermath of the violence was destruction of public property in downtown Cochabamba paid for by taxpayers, the death of one civilian, restitution by the government, and hundreds of injured police, military personnel, and protestors.
A movie titled Even the Rain with actor Gael García Bernal depicts a historical fiction story set in this time.
[107] In 2016, Bechtel began construction on the first phase of the Edmonton Valley Line Light Rail Transit project in Alberta, Canada, the first public–private partnership (P3) business group.
[108] The company is also involved in several ongoing projects as of 2016, including building national infrastructure in Gabon[109] and supporting the continuous development of Jubail industrial city in Saudi Arabia.
[112] In May 2017, Bechtel was appointed the delivery management partner for the tunnels and stations excavation package of Stage 2 of the Sydney Metro project.
The 778 megawatt natural gas-fired power plant supplies electricity to 778,000 homes in northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C., metro area.
[141] In 2014, M&M completed the Caval Ridge coal mine in Queensland,[142] and began operations at Escondida's OLAP copper cathode project, which consisted of a new dynamic leaching pad and a mineral handling system.
[147][148] 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.
[152] Bechtel completed the engineering, procurement, and construction of a water system and desalination plant for the Escondida copper mine in Chile[138][153] in 2018.
[154] The Bechtel-Techint joint venture team built a dual 112-mile-long pipeline to carry desalinated water from the Pacific Coast across the Atacama Desert to the Escondida copper mine approximately 10,000 feet above sea level in the Andes.
[167][168] Bechtel has built five LNG production trains for Cheniere Energy Partners LP as the Sabine Pass liquefaction project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana.
[175] In March 2014, the unit was awarded a contract to construct facilities in Georgia for the Shah Deniz II gas field in Azerbaijan.
[177] 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.
[182] In late 2017, the unit was selected to design and build Tellurian's Driftwood LNG project, a proposed liquefied gas facility in Louisiana.
[200] 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.
[208] Bechtel was awarded the contract and took over day-to-day construction of Plant Vogtle's Units 3 and 4 after Westinghouse Electric, the designer and principal contractor for the two new reactors, filed for bankruptcy.
[210][211] The Manufacturing & Technology unit designs and builds projects in the semiconductor, electric vehicle, synthetic materials, and data center markets.