Front End

Imitation = Wisdom

With the goal of doubling its copper production, mining giant Xstrata has forged an agreement with Bechtel to develop a standardized design for its copper concentrator projects.

Bechtel is a long-time advocate of standard plant programs for many industrial processes. Uniform designs lay out a plant’s major equipment to optimize conveying, piping, and electrical systems. Then, with minor adjustments, the design can be replicated on multiple projects, reducing the per-unit cost, while volume discounts on materials save even more. And, today, as major equipment delivery is often a critical- path obstacle to rapid completion, standard designs that lend themselves to early equipment ordering can also mean project startup months ahead of conventional approaches.

Two Xstrata projects in Peru are entering the advanced study phases, and the program may soon expand to include other projects in Latin America and elsewhere.

Testing the Winds

Wind power is on the rise in the United States. Installed capacity increased 45 percent during 2007, and not just in California and Texas, where turbines have long been part of the landscape. Minnesota and Iowa rank third and fourth in wind- generated megawatts.

Now Wisconsin has set the stage for a dramatic increase. That’s where Bechtel engineers from the Elm Road power plant project and the company’s Communications business unit are helping the customer during construction of the 145-megawatt Blue Sky Green Field wind farm. By the time the project’s 88 turbines are completed this summer, the facility could generate enough power for 36,000 homes and increase Wisconsin’s installed wind power capacity fourfold.

Over the last 110 years, Bechtel has stayed close to the leading edge of renewable and clean power. The company has supported customers in developing geothermal, solar, and resource recovery projects.

As power company customers increasingly look for “green” solutions, they may find that, as the song says: “the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Speaking of Safety

Safety never gets a bad rap at Bechtel. That’s a message taken to heart by Brent Schroeder, an employee of Bechtel’s Bantrel subsidiary in Canada, who recently wrote and performed his own safety song in the form of a rap video. The journeyman ironworker—a former semi-professional boxer—sends a fresh and powerful message. His song, “Getting It Right—Build Smart, Build Safe,” combines a catchy rhythm of familiar construction sounds with a rap about returning to one’s family at the end of a workday and his description of a fatal job site accident.

Since it was completed in 2005, the seven-minute admonition has aired at toolbox meetings on Bechtel projects and at national construction conferences. The reaction: universally positive. Employees and customers young and old connect with his experience of “looking death in the eye” and his resolution to “get it right” for himself and coworkers by following safety procedures and using the right equipment.

CO₂ Adieu

Integrated gasification combined-cycle power plants, like other coal-based generating facilities, are a major source of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Although IGCC can capture up to 90 percent of a plant’s CO₂, until regulatory guidelines for carbon capture and storage are clarified, some developers will look for other solutions.

One intriguing possibility is polygeneration, which uses gasification to produce high-value products in addition to electricity, such as hydrogen for refineries and fertilizer plants, substitute natural gas, and transportation fuels. In the process of manufacturing these by-products, polygeneration plants capture much of the carbon that would otherwise be emitted.

Bechtel is currently working on several polygeneration projects, including one with GE Energy for a customer in Saskatchewan, in which the plant’s CO₂ would help extract oil from depleted wells, then be permanently sequestered underground. The plant would be the first of its type in Canada, and could be in service by 2013.

Big Ideas for Small Business

Successful small businesses are one prerequisite for the growth of any economy. Yet, programs that train people in business startup skills are hard to find in some parts of Eastern Europe.

Not so in Cluj, near the Autostrada Transilvania motorway that Bechtel is constructing in Romania. The company supported a nine-month training program in that community for young adults and a business fundamentals program for teenagers from disadvantaged families.

The adults learned about budgeting, banking, and managing their financial resources. Participants have developed business plans for a pest control company, a furniture workshop, and even firms that may garner contracts on the motorway. Meanwhile, the teenagers learned to search for a job, complete a successful interview, and save money. They then teamed up to start a company that makes and sells holiday cards.

Both programs will soon expand to other rural communities along the motorway.

Six Sigma: The Way We Work

Six Sigma, a data-driven method of improving efficiency and quality, is increasingly changing our approach to entire industries. Take liquefied natural gas, for example.

By simply improving high-cost processes— streamlining the feeding of 2,600 craft laborers, maximizing tonnage on incoming freight shipments, and more—the Six Sigma team at Bechtel’s recently completed LNG project in Equatorial Guinea contributed to one of the industry’s fastest project completions to date, six months ahead of schedule.

Our strategic commitment to integrating Six Sigma into every LNG project has helped make Bechtel the world leader in building LNG facilities since we launched the process improvement program in 2000. With more than half of all Bechtel employees now trained in Six Sigma, and most projects employing its methods end to end, the process improvement methodology has become a key aspect of the way we work.

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