Milestones

Awards · Announcements · Appointments

CONTRACT EXTENSION

USA The U.S. Department of Energy has extended by two years Bechtel BWXT Idaho’s contract to manage and operate the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Plant project near Idaho Falls. Bechtel National is the lead partner in the project, which moved the largest amount of transuranic waste ever from a DOE complex site, during the contract’s first 12 months.

RAIL STATION COMPLETED

USA Bechtel has completed construction management for the renovation and expansion of the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica Station in Queens, New York—a key transfer point for 20,000 daily commuters. The station offers easier connections to trains, buses, and subways for riders of the new AirTrain LightRail line that links Jamaica Station with nearby JFK International Airport. Bechtel also provided construction management oversight for the AirTrain Light Rail project.     

CLEANUP COMPLETED

USA A team that includes Bechtel has completed cleanup of the last of 65 major liquid-waste sites in southeastern Washington state. Begun in 1994 under the Bechtel-led Environmental Restoration Contract, the work is part of the new River Corridor Closure Contract to remove contaminated materials from alongside the Columbia River at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. Since 1994, the team has disposed of 5.1 million tonnes of material contaminated by cooling water that leaked from nine plutonium production reactors active between 1943 and 1989.

NUCLEAR EQUIPMENT REPLACEMENT

USA Bechtel has replaced a 145-tonne reactor head and three 363-tonne steam generators at First Energy Nuclear Operating Company’s Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Bechtel created a temporary 7-meter-square construction opening in the wall of the concrete containment building and developed a special lift system to move the equipment inside. After two years of planning, the 65-day replacement outage was completed April 19.

GEORGIA ROAD, BUS RAPID TRANSIT JOB

USA Georgia’s Department of Transportation awarded its first-ever contract for a public-private highway and bus rapid transit project to a Bechtel-led team called Georgia Transportation Partners. The agreement covers preliminary engineering and development services for expansion of a 40-kilometer stretch of Interstates 75 and 575 northwest of Atlanta. Work will involve developing lane configurations, including toll lanes for commuters and trucks.

SAFETY FIRST

STELLAR SAFETY RECORDS The Bechtel-led project team retrieving, compacting, and shipping transuranic nuclear waste at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Plant in Idaho recently completed 2.1 million accident-free hours. The Fjarðaál aluminum smelter project team has completed more than 2.5 million job hours without a lost-time injury, five times more than any company in any industry has accomplished in Iceland. Other notable safety achievements include 4.5 million accident-free hours at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama; 15.2 million hours at the Atlantic LNG Train 4 project in Trinidad & Tobago; 14.9 million hours at the SGP Power Generation project in Kazakhstan; 1.3 million hours at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge project in Washington State; and 4.9 million hours at the Onshore Gas Development Phase III project in the United Arab Emirates.

REFINERY PROJECTS

CANADA Bechtel’s Canadian affiliate Bantrel has completed a three-year contract to engineer and construct a diesel desulphurization facility at Petro-Canada’s Edmonton, Alberta, refinery. The firm has recently begun work to add an upgrader to convert the Edmonton Refinery to a bitumen-based feedstock from Petro-Canada’s oil sands extraction sites and from other producers in Northern Alberta. Completion is expected in mid-2008.

MANAGEMENT MOVES

Judith Miller has joined Bechtel as general counsel, senior vice president, and member of the Board of Directors. Carl Rau has been named manager of EPC Functions. Jim Henschel has been named to lead Bechtel’s alliance with GE to develop, market, and construct standardized power plants based on integrated gasification combined cycle technology. Bill Elkins replaces Henschel as program director for the Waste Treatment Plant project in Washington State. Jim Illich now leads the upstream market sector of Bechtel’s Oil, Gas & Chemicals business unit; Amos Avidan replaces Illich as project director at the Equatorial Guinea LNG project.

KENTUCKY POWER PLANT

USA Bechtel has been awarded a contract to construct a 750-megawatt super-critical pulverized coal-fired power plant in Trimble County, Kentucky, for E.ON U.S. subsidiaries, Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities Co.; Indiana Municipal Power Agency; and Illinois Municipal Electric Agency. The $1.1 billion facility will be the cleanest, most-efficient coal-fired unit in Kentucky, according to the customer. Bechtel received a notice to proceed in June and will begin construction later this year. Completion is scheduled for 2010.

CLOSER

With Respect and Regard This past April, George Shultz retired from Bechtel’s Board of Directors. When Shultz joined Bechtel in 1974 as executive vice president, he already had experienced and accomplished more at age 53 than most do in a lifetime. A renowned economist, distinguished statesman, and extraordinary business leader, Shultz’s career encompassed academia, government, and industry. As dean of the University of Chicago’s business school, he advised the nation’s leaders. As secretary of state under President Reagan, he helped keep America strong and at peace. As president (1975 to 1982), director, and senior counselor at Bechtel, he shared his wisdom, dedication, energy, and intelligence for more than a quarter of a century.

 


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