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Milestones
PORT PROJECT
ABU DHABI Bechtel has won a program management contract from the Abu Dhabi Ports Company to develop the $2.5 billion Khalifa Port and Industrial Zone, at Taweelah, between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The project includes construction of a large industrial and container handling terminal and piers for cargo handling, as well as an industrial zone that could grow to more than 450 square kilometers. Completion of Stage 1, for the first 170 square kilometers, is expected in February 2010.
UK RAIL STATION COMPLETED
ENGLAND Bechtel has completed the new six-platform Ebbsfleet International Station on the UK’s High Speed 1 project (formerly the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). Travelers from outlying areas of London will soon be able to board high-speed Eurostar trains to France and Belgium without traveling to the city center. London and Continental Railways, the firm that operates the rail line, anticipates that Ebbsfleet International, which is about 35 kilometers from London’s St. Pancras Station, will be the line’s most popular intermediate stop when service opens in late 2007.
PARAXYLENE PLANT EXPANSION
THAILAND Bechtel will expand a Thai Paraxylene Co. Ltd production facility at Sri Racha, Thailand. The project will add capacity of 118,000 tonnes per year of paraxylene, while also allowing for increased production of benzene, toluenes, and mixed xylenes. Paraxylene is used to make polyesters, which are used in clothing, packaging, plastic bottles, and other products. Completion is set for late 2007.
ALBANIAN MOTORWAY
ALBANIA A Bechtel-led joint venture with Turkish contractor Enka will build a 57-kilometer four-lane highway link between Durres, Albania, and Kosovo. The $535 million project will create a faster route between the countries and is expected to stimulate the economy in Albania’s northeastern region. The new road will be 45 kilometers shorter than the current two-lane highway and will reduce travel time from six hours to about two hours.
SAFETY FIRST
STELLAR SAFETY RECORDS Bechtel’s project team at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, has completed 152 months without a lost-time accident. The High Speed 1 project team in England has completed more than 9.9 million job hours without a lost-time injury. The Bluegrass demilitarization project in Kentucky recently completed 1.4 million accident-free hours. Other notable safety achievements include 2.1 million accident-free hours at the Sohar Aluminum project in Oman; 2.5 million hours at the ASAB Gas Development II project in Abu Dhabi; 10.2 million hours at the Trans Malaysia Gas Pipeline project in Thailand; 3.1 million hours at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California; and, in Costa Rica, 3 million hours at the Juan Santamaria Airport project.
REFINERY EXPANSION
USA A joint venture led by Bechtel has been awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract by Motiva Enterprises LLC for the proposed
expansion of its Port Arthur, Texas, refinery. The 3½-year project is expected to more than double the facility’s capacity and is the largest refinery expansion currently planned in the United States. Motiva is jointly owned by Saudi Refining, Inc., and Shell Oil Company.
MANAGEMENT MOVES
Carl Rau now heads Bechtel’s engineering, procurement, and construction functions organization. Jack Futcher succeeds Rau as head of London Operations for Bechtel’s Oil, Gas & Chemicals business unit. George Conniff has been named project director for the Elm Road Generating Station project in Wisconsin, Bechtel’s largest-ever lump-sum turnkey project. Pat Chang-Lo now leads Bechtel’s work in greater China.
TRINIDAD SMELTER
TRINIDAD & TOBAGO Alcoa has awarded Bechtel a contract to perform engineering, procurement, and construction management for a 341,000-tonne-per-year aluminum smelter and carbon anode plant in southwest Trinidad. The 28-month project, valued at $1.4 billion, is scheduled for completion in late 2009. Bechtel is currently building two other projects for Alcoa: an aluminum smelter in Iceland and a carbon anode production facility in Norway.
FEMA CONTRACT
UNITED STATES Under a new two-year task order contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Bechtel will provide temporary housing and recovery support in response to disasters in the United States and its territories. Six companies were awarded identical contracts in the competitive-bid process. Bechtel is nearing completion of a separate FEMA contract, which delivered temporary housing units to nearly 100,000 victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Mississippi, at a pace described by FEMA as “faster than any … in history.”
CLOSER
Hard Job, Well Done
IRAQ After more than three years, all of Bechtel’s non-Iraqi employees have completed their reconstruction work for the U.S. Agency for International Development and have left the country. It’s no secret the work was hard, and, at times, dangerous. But Bechtel performed well, providing new power capacity, clean water and sanitation, transportation and communications infrastructure, and refurbished schools. In the process, the company trained thousands of Iraqi professionals and craft workers, and employed more than 40,000 Iraqis. Violence gripping the nation claimed the lives of 52 people associated with the project.
From the rapid dredging of the country’s only deepwater port to restoring phone service in Baghdad to supplying clean water to approximately 500,000 rural villagers for the first time, Bechtel performed “exceptionally well,” said USAID.
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