Skip to content

Bechtel’s Impact Report

Bechtel Wins Prestigious U.K. Employer Award for Diversity

  • 18 November 2015
    LONDON
  • Asia Pacific, Crossrail, Diversity, Engineering, Procurement & Construction, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Financing & Equity Financing, Press Release, Women

WISE Award Recognizes Company’s Efforts to Increase Number of Female Engineers

Bechtel, one of the world’s leading engineering and construction companies, has won one of the top diversity awards in the U.K. The U.S.-based company was presented with the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Employer Award by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal, at a ceremony in London last week, fending off stiff competition. The award recognizes Bechtel’s systematic approach to tackling diversity and inclusion on multiple levels within its organization.

“Bechtel now employs more than twice the number of women engineers than the UK average,” said Ailie MacAdam, regional manager for infrastructure, Europe and Africa, at Bechtel. “Almost 40% of Bechtel’s engineers on the Crossrail project in London are women, and, more importantly, we have agreed what success looks like when it comes to diversity of our teams going forward,” 

“Bechtel was recognized for the way it has embedded its business case and its targets for change throughout the organization,” said Sarah Shaw, communications director, WISE. “We hope that by winning this award Bechtel will inspire its industry peers to achieve similar success.”

In 2013, Bechtel launched Women@Bechtel, a global collaborative forum for both men and women to share perspectives and experiences as well as learn about tools for success. The group has carried out a Six Sigma data analysis of all its gender data and led a number of strategic initiatives to share learning and good practice; to retain and develop women; and to sponsor female talent and increase the transparency of opportunities for career growth.

Recent events have included speed mentoring; the ‘10 lunch’ initiative, in which senior managers have lunch with small groups of employees to share ideas and concerns; and a ‘Family Matters’ event to tackle the challenges of women returning to work. 

With a family heritage of more than 100 years, San Francisco-based Bechtel is guided by firmly-held values that encourage an inclusive culture based on diverse backgrounds, experience, and views. The WISE ‘Employer of the Year’ Award follows previous diversity awards won by Bechtel, including ‘Best Diversity Company’, awarded by Engineering & Information Technology magazine in 2011 for the third consecutive year. 

About Bechtel

Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers’ objectives to create a lasting positive impact. Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world's infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place.  

Bechtel serves the Energy; Infrastructure; Manufacturing & Technology; Mining & Metals; and Nuclear, Security & Environmental markets. Our services span from initial planning and investment, through start-up and operations. www.bechtel.com

RSS icon Add the Bechtel News Feed to my RSS reader.