Front End

On the Ground in Iraq

Since the April award of a U.S. Agency for International Development contract, Bechtel has helped the U.S. government take charge of reconstructing major infrastructure in postwar Iraq. The job involves mobilizing Bechtel personnel and managing a team of international and Iraqi subcontractors to repair, rehabilitate, or reconstruct facilities damaged by fighting and by decades of neglect.

Bechtel people hit the ground running, overseeing dredging and dock repair at the Umm Qasr seaport to allow critical humanitarian supplies to reach the population, and evaluating damaged power production and transmission facilities. Experienced subcontractors were quickly enlisted to assess damage and begin constructing and repairing water, irrigation, and sewage systems. Work also will include repair and improvement of transportation links—airports, railways, and roads—as well as hospitals and schools. It all adds up to a monumental task, essential to helping Iraqis resume a normal day-to-day existence and to stabilizing and strengthening Iraq’s economy.

The initial contract value is $34 million, which could grow to $680 million over 18 months. Like all U.S. federal procurements, the U.S. Congress must approve future spending. USAID has deployed an unprecedented number of contracting officers and overseers to manage the contract.

Well-grounded Plan

At Miami International Airport, a Bechtel joint venture is leading a highly complex 10-year, $4.8 billion capital improvement program. The expansion calls for new construction, as well as tearing down and rebuilding sections of the airport in stages. This includes terminal and concourse areas, cargo facilities, a 1,500-space parking garage, an air traffic control tower, a new runway, and more. The airport is one of the country’s busiest, so the project team manages its ground traffic and construction with a daily game plan that works around more than 1,000 takeoffs and landings and 90,000 passengers. It must be effective: The customer recently exercised an option for a five-year extension on the joint venture’s contract.

Bechtel Buzz

“The experts assembled for the Tacoma Narrows project are superstars, at the top of their game.”
— From a report on Bechtel’s joint-venture bridge building team, in The Tacoma News Tribune.

Hot and Heavy

If you’ve ever replaced your home water heater, you have something in common with nuclear power plant owners. Many have found that the steam generators in their aging facilities are, like your water heater, inclined to wear out and leak. While the leaks don’t endanger the public, they reduce plant efficiency.

Replacing a steam generator is not an easy job. They weigh up to 725 tonnes and are housed in cubicles with 120-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete walls. Since the first steam generator replacement at a U.S. power plant more than 20 years ago, Bechtel has completed two dozen of these challenging trade-outs—more than any other contractor. And in recent months, we’ve been awarded two new steam generator replacement contracts.

Helmets to Hardhats

When a Bechtel labor relations manager attended a “workforce summit” in 2001, he was intrigued by the suggestion for a new program to place skilled ex-military personnel in construction jobs. Given a shortfall of 1.6 million U.S. construction workers forecasted over the next five years, the advantages were clear. Veterans possess qualities that translate well to a job site: dependability, trainability, and dedication.

By late 2002, the idea had become reality—a program called Helmets to Hardhats, with the Bechtel manager co-chairing the trust that oversees it. It’s the first recruiting program the industry has established with the military and its goals are noble: building a pipeline of qualified workers, while easing veterans’ transition to civilian life.

After months of planning, the program has been launched. Its Web site (www.helmetstohardhats.com) is a one-stop resource for veterans to reach recruiters and search for job openings. The site is already reporting success stories of veterans who have found work through the program.

Capping a Catastrophe

At the Chornobyl nuclear power facility in Ukraine, a “sarcophagus” was hastily erected over Unit 4 after the world’s worst nuclear accident 17 years ago. Now a Bechtel-led consortium, including Battelle and Electricité de France, is creating a conceptual design for what could be the largest moveable structure ever built—an 18,000-tonne steel shell—to enclose the damaged unit.

In May 2002, the design team started to develop a weather enclosure, with a 100-year life span, to mitigate further deterioration and provide a safer decontamination site. They settled on a steel arch truss design 257 meters across, 112 meters high, and 150 meters in length, with truss depth of 12 meters.

To maximize worker safety, plans call for constructing the arch in sections, away from its final location. The combined sections will then slide along lubricated steel tracks over the unit. Once the enclosure is in place, robotic cranes will pry apart twisted girders and sort chunks of radioactive debris for long-term storage.

A New Dimension for Steel

A new dimension for steelThe American Institute of Steel Construction predicts that within 10 years, two-dimensional design and shop drawings will belong to a bygone era, replaced by digital 3D modeling. In the future, they say, engineers will provide owners with 3D models, which can be shared by designers, builders, and managers over the life of a facility.

Although there’s still a challenge in getting architects and subcontractors up to speed, Bechtel welcomes the paradigm shift. We’ve used 3D models for engineering, procurement, and construction for years.

The process works like this: An engineer develops a 3D model and shares in-progress models electronically with the steel fabricator. The fabricator uses them to drive computer-controlled equipment that finishes the steel by cutting, coping, drilling, and sawing. At the same time, the steel erector can use the model to develop a construction sequence. It all has the potential to cut the steel erection schedule in half, since design, detailing, and planning overlap.

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