 |
|
Front End
High-speed History
Bechtel helped rewrite part of Britain’s railroad history late last year, as a Virgin Pendolino train set a new speed record along the West Coast Main Line. The train, which uses hydraulics to tilt into curves and counteract centrifugal forces at high speeds, completed its 400-mile (645-kilo-meter) journey from Scotland’s Glasgow Central Station to London’s Euston Station in a record time of 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 27 seconds, reaching a peak speed of 125 miles (202 kilometers) per hour.
Nearly 400 passengers from around the United Kingdom bought seats on the special nonstop run, helping raise almost $60,000 for a charity that buys motorcycles to deliver healthcare supplies in Africa. Bechtel has been managing the modernization of the line since early 2002.
Engineering Egypt
Egypt was a pioneer among countries requiring multinational firms to employ local people and resources in the design and construction of new power plants. Since 1993, the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Energy has been part owner, with Bechtel, of PGESCo, a Cairo company established to stimulate technology transfer.
With Bechtel’s support, PGESCo performs engineering, procurement, and project and construction management services with nearly 400 mostly Egyptian employees. PGESCo-built plants throughout Egypt now provide more than one-third of the country’s electricity, and work is under way on several more large power projects. Recently, the company expanded its footprint to include new generating facilities in Libya and other neighboring countries.
Bechtel is proud to have helped forge this groundbreaking partnership and looks forward to further developing Egypt’s talented engineering workforce.
Power to the People
In April 2002, work was halted on the Mountainview power plant—one of a number of new facilities intended to ease California’s costly energy crisis. By 2004, when Southern California Edison brought Bechtel aboard to restart the project on an accelerated schedule, mothballed equipment had deteriorated, the plant’s permits had expired, and many regulations had changed.
To further complicate the resurrection, the area was hit with one of its heaviest rainfalls in 50 years, washing out the primary haul road and otherwise delaying progress.
Bechtel brought to the challenge Six Sigma, a data-driven system for quality improvement that has saved customers millions of dollars in recent years. With Six Sigma, the Mountainview team addressed numerous potential snags and helped ensure the best worker-safety record of any fossil-fuel plant ever built in California.
The benefits accrued to Bechtel employees, who returned home safely when the job was completed last year; to the customer, who could generate power and revenue months sooner than anticipated; and, especially, to Californians who have enjoyed $60 million of savings on electricity and 1,000 megawatts of additional power.
Enter the Mentor
Finding a helpful mentor has always been a challenge for students—especially for women and other under-represented groups. Enter MentorNet, a nonprofit e-mail network that unites student protégés at colleges worldwide with engineers and scientists at Bechtel and other companies.
MentorNet, which receives support from the Bechtel Group Foundation and the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, opens doors to science, math, engineering, and technology students who want to broaden their awareness of interesting career options, and to mentors who want to share their work experience.
This adaptation of mentoring to the highly efficient world of e-mail and the Internet allows Bechtel to foster growth opportunities for both students and employees. At the same time, participants are building bonds that enlarge Bechtel’s—and society’s—pool of engineering talent.
Bechtel Buzz
“By completing this project three years early, DOE and Bechtel Jacobs have delivered and surpassed on the cleanup commitment at the East Tennessee Technology Park.”
—Gerald Boyd, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office, referring to the removal of the last of more than 6,000 cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride.
Powerful Endings
Late last year, Power magazine gave its “2006 Plant of the Year” award to the new power unit that Bechtel built at the Springerville Generating Station in Arizona. Two months later, the plant was named “Best Coal-fired Project of 2006” by another magazine, Power Engineering.
Such awards are not unusual, but Bechtel’s Springerville team had to clear a number of hurdles to win them. Among the challenges: the bankruptcy of a steel supplier just after delivering its first shipment; vibration problems with a feed pump; delivery delays for the steam turbine generator; faulty supplier welds in the boiler’s tubes; and problems recruiting and retaining workers for the remote Arizona site.
On top of those challenges, midway through construction the customer asked Bechtel to complete the project five months ahead of the originally scheduled delivery date.
Easier said than done. But done nevertheless.
Back to BART
San Francisco’s BART was North America’s first modern interurban rapid transit system. As its program manager, Bechtel engineered a safety margin into the system to protect against earthquakes.
That foresight paid off in 1989, when a quake measuring 6.9 shook the Bay Area. Joints connecting BART’s Transbay Tube to structures at each end shifted less than 0.8 inch (two centimeters)—a fraction of their 3.9-inch (10-centimeter) tolerance. There was no damage to the aerial guideways.
With the benefit of experience from subsequent temblors and more powerful simulation software, BART managers brought Bechtel back to search for lingering vulnerabilities and to incorporate an even larger safety margin. Five years into the job, Bechtel has found segments of the original BART system to reinforce and has launched a retrofit of the tube to ensure against the largest anticipated quake.
The recent contract extension to 2013 is an expression of the customer’s confidence in Bechtel and of the bonds forged by success.
Back to Departments
Back to top