It is a holding company that provides services through its subsidiaries in three main areas: oil and gas, industrial and infrastructure, government and power.

A global recession in the oil and gas industry and losses from its mining operation led to restructuring and layoffs in the 1980s.

Fluor sold its oil operations and diversified its construction work into a broader range of services and industries.

During the war Fluor manufactured synthetic rubber and was responsible for a substantial portion of high-octane gasoline production in the United States.

It also created Fluor Ocean Services in Houston in 1968[3] and acquired an interest in other fossil fuel operations in the 1970s.

[12] Fluor made a $2.9 billion acquisition of a zinc, gold, lead and coal mining operation, St. Joe Minerals, in 1981[16] after a bidding competition for the business with Seagram.

[19][20] By 1981, Fluor's staff had grown to 29,000 and revenue, backlog, and profits had each increased more than 30 percent over the prior year.

[28] The company sold $750 million in assets, including Fluor's headquarters in Irvine, in order to pay $1 billion in debt.

[19][33] The company began offering environmental cleanup and pollution control services, which grew to half of its new business by 1992.

[3] In 1997, Fluor's revenues fell almost 50 percent, in part due to the Asian financial crisis[37] and a decrease in overseas business.

[37][41] In January 1998, McCraw (age 63) resigned after being diagnosed with bladder cancer[42][43] and was replaced by former Shell Oil President, Philip J.

[45] The acquisition of this company, which modifies and maintains large power plants, was completed in March 2016, in a stock purchase worth $755 million.

Many of Fluor's operations are located near natural resources, such as uranium in Canada, oil reserves in the Middle East and mines in Australia.

[49] The company hosts online and in-person anti-corruption training sessions for staff and operates an ethics hotline.

Former CEO Alan Boeckmann helped create the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), whereby companies agree to a set of ethics principles.

Fluor has trained more than 100,000 craft workers in Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, Pakistan, Kuwait and other countries, where the needed labor skills weren't available locally.

[12] It may also serve clients through a joint venture with another construction firm when a local infrastructure or niche expertise is needed.

[48] Fluor acquired shares of Genentech Inc. in 1981,[54] and it bought a 10 percent interest in a smelter and refinery facility in Gresik, Indonesia in 1995 for $550 million.

[9] Fluor built the first "Buddha Tower" in 1921[8][9] in Signal Hill, California, for the Industrial Fuel Supply Company.

[8][10] It built an expansion of the Dhahran Airfield in Saudi Arabia for the United States Army in the 1950s[8] and accepted its first international project for ARAMCO in the Middle East.

[12] In the 1960s and 1970s, Fluor built the first all-hydrogen refinery in Kuwait and the first exclusively offshore power plant for the Atlantic Richfield Company.

[3] In 1976, it was awarded a $5 billion project for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia, to design facilities that capture sour gas, which is expelled from oil wells as waste, in order to refine it into fuel.

[12] In 1979, Fluor had 13 projects for building United States power plants and had served more than half of the world's government-owned oil companies.

[56][57] After a chemical explosion in 1997, 11 workers filed a lawsuit alleging they were denied appropriate medical attention and protective gear.

[58] In 2005 the US Department of Energy fined Fluor for safety violations[57] and that same year a jury awarded $4.7 million in damages to eleven pipe fitters who claimed they were fired after complaining that a valve rated for 1,975 pounds per square inch (psi) was being used where a valve rated at 2,235 psi was needed.

[61] In December 2012, Fluor was awarded a $3.14 billion contract to build a new Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River.