125 Years of
Making History

New Deal projects helped lift America out of the Great Depression. Hoover Dam was Bechtel’s first megaproject and the world’s tallest dam. Today, it continues to generate enough power for 1.3 million people. Other New Deal Bechtel projects included the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – at the time, the world’s longest span.

The birth of nuclear power ushers in a new era in energy. Bechtel created the reactor, the world’s first to generate usable electricity. Today, the site is a National Historic Landmark. Bechtel would go on to work on more than 80% of nuclear plants in the U.S. and 150 worldwide.

Post-war growth in the Bay Area made transit an ongoing problem. The solution: an innovative rail network that would cross fault lines and dive beneath San Francisco Bay, among other feats. When BART opened in 1972, it spurred a renaissance in modern rail transit, both nationally and internationally.

America won the Space Race with the help of Bechtel engineers who supported the Gemini and Apollo programs. Today, we’re helping to build the mobile launch infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center for a return to the moon – and possibly someday the first mission to Mars.

From megaprojects to the first “giga-project.” Bechtel transformed a sleepy fishing village in Saudi Arabia into the world’s largest industrial city. Requiring vast resources and logistical planning on an unprecedented scale, it is the biggest civil engineering project in modern times, and it continues to grow.

An engineering feat two centuries in the making, the first dreams of linking Britain and France went back to Napoleon’s time. Bechtel brought them over the finish line. About 350 trains per day now travel the 50 km-long tunnel diving 50 meters under the English Channel.

The aftermath of history’s worst nuclear accident is now sheltered under the world’s largest land-based moving structure, a dome bigger than Wembley Stadium and taller than the Statue of Liberty. Bechtel led the team responsible for the dome, designed to prevent radiation releases for the next 100 years.

The world's transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles will require unprecedented supplies of copper. Los Pelambres in the mountainous north-central region of Chile is the largest greenfield copper concentrator Bechtel has undertaken. We are now working to further expand its capacity.

One of a new generation of suspension bridges, the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the fifth longest suspension bridge in the U.S. and the longest built in the United States since the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964.

Bechtel has built about 30% of the world’s LNG capacity, helping to replace other fossil fuels, reduce carbon emissions, and give developing regions greater access to more affordable energy. Bechtel simultaneously built three LNG production facilities at Curtis Island that together account for 8% of global LNG.

When we design and build a project, Bechtel’s focus is on helping our customers create a lasting positive legacy, and that includes protecting the environment. We are delivering clean energy solutions to power a sustainable future.