One of Bechtel's earliest major contracts was grading the site of the Oroville, CA depot for the Western Pacific Railroad, then under construction. Over the next 20 years, he built up a sizeable contracting business that specialized in railroad and highway building. Bechtel, started as an employee of the burgeoning United States railroad industry in 1898 after his Oklahoma cattle ranch failed. īechtel has always functioned as a family-owned company.
Bechtel's long involvement with oil, power, and water overseas has become a focus of criticism by the growing anti-globalization and environmental movements. Bush administration and Bechtel.įor several years Bechtel owned and operated power plants, oil refineries, water systems, and airports in several countries including the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Politicians in the United States and in Europe have made accusations of cronyism between the George W. Recently, the company has come under criticism for alleged mismanagement of the Big Dig project, illegal resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, its financial links to the bin Laden family, and the manner in which it received Iraqi rebuilding contracts after the U.S. Fact|date=March 2007 The company also has strong ties to other governments, particularly the Saudi Royal Family. Bechtel has maintained strong relationships with officials in many United States administrations, including those of Nixon, Reagan, George H. Bechtel's size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a perennial target for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1945.
It has also had involvement in several other high profile construction engineering projects, including the Channel Tunnel, numerous power projects, refineries, and nuclear power plants, BART, Jubail Industrial City and Kingdom Centre and Tower in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong International Airport, the Big Dig, 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. With headquarters in San Francisco, Bechtel had 40,000 employees as of 2006 working on projects in nearly 50 countries with $20.5 billion in revenue.īechtel participated in the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. Revenue = US$20.5B ( profit13% FY '05 to '06)īechtel Corporation ( Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 9th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. Riveting and revealing (Kirkus Reviews), The Profiteers is one of the biggest business and political stories of our time.Industry = Heavy construction, Engineering, Project Management Veiled in obsessive secrecy, Bechtel has had closer ties to the US government than any other private corporation in modern memory.
Like all stories of empire building, the rise of Bechtel-one of the first mega companies to emerge in the American West-presents a complex and riveting narrative. The Bechtel Group has eclipsed its few rivals, with developments in emerging and third world nations that include secret military installations and defense projects underground bunkers in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan oil pipelines and entire cities in the Middle East palaces for Arab rulers, such as the Saudi Royal Family and chemical plants for Arab dictators. Bechtel is now one of the largest privately held corporations in the world. In their century-long quest, five generations of Bechtel men have harnessed and distributed much of the planet's natural resources, including solar geothermal power.
They would go on to build the world, from the construction of airports in Hong Kong and Doha, to pipelines and tunnels in Alaska and Europe, to mining and energy operations around the globe. Dad Bechtel, who led a consortium that constructed the Hoover Dam. The tale of the Bechtel family dynasty is a classic American business story.
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