Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United
States, ranking as the 9th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. 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.
Bechtel
participated in the building of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. 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.
The
Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1925. Bechtel's
size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a perennial
target for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel has maintained
strong relationships with officials in many United States administrations,
including those of Nixon, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W.
Bush.[citation needed] The company also has strong ties to other governments,
particularly the Saudi Royal Family. |
