User:M P at Bechtel/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 in 2001.

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,