Bechtel completed—ahead of schedule and under budget—the $270 million expansion of a copper concentrator that Bechtel originally designed and constructed at the Collhahuasi copper mine in Chile. The company completed the original concentrator in 1999.

Collahuasi is the world’s third-largest copper mine. The 62,000 ton-per-day expansion project more than doubled the plant’s capacity.

Collahuasi was one the world’s highest, harshest job sites. Stranded 4,800 meters above sea level in the Andes and surrounded by northern Chile’s brutally barren Atacama Desert, the copper mine is subject to conditions that are unprecedented, and unrelenting. Breathing is a struggle in the thin air. Temperatures rarely top 11 degrees Celsius during the day and normally plunge below freezing at night. Ferocious blizzards, lightning storms, and active volcanoes batter the region. There are no trees, signs of animal life are rare, and humans are almost unheard of—the nearest settlement is nearly 100 kilometers away.

Bechtel began work on Collahuasi in December 1995, facing a formidable task. Collahuasi wasn’t just about building a copper mine. There were five major construction projects under the overall umbrella: a copper concentrator plant; a copper solvent extraction plant; a 190-kilometer-long copper slurry pipeline; new deep-water port facilities at Punta Patache; and a raft of infrastructure facilities at both the mine site and the port, from buildings and utilities to deep well pumps and a sewage treatment plant. And there were auxiliary projects as well. The team had to build a 190-kilometer paved road to the site, as well as service roads, well fields, and even a new mine airport.

It was an ambitious agenda that called for up-front legwork and strategic planning.

Not surprisingly, high-altitude issues figured prominently in this front-end phase—after all, aircraft are pressurized at 4,800 meters. The Bechtel team had to address everything from productivity, morale, and altitude sickness to special safety and construction issues. Workers underwent thorough medical examinations before venturing to the site, and again whenever they arrived at high elevation. Testing included a pulmonary exam, respiration test, blood-oxygen test, chest X-ray, and ekg. About 25 percent of the applicants couldn’t make the cut. To maintain productivity, the 12,000-plus construction contractors, craftspeople, laborers, and management personnel worked a schedule of either 20 days on-site and 10 days off, or 10 days on-site and 5 days off.

Mother Nature threw everything she had at the Collahuasi crew. During winter in the Atacama temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and snowstorms can form swiftly. Snowmobiles and alpine rescue huts were scattered across the area to protect workers from exposure. During summer, lightning strikes are frequent in the Andes. An alarm system was set up to give a half-hour warning of approaching storms. Workers also wore special, nonconducting safety shoes instead of steel-toed shoes.

Coping seems like something of an understatement, given the results. Various pieces of the original $1.7 billion project came in under budget and ahead of schedule—in some cases two—four months early.