Bechtel is one of the largest engineering, procurement and construction firms in the United States, founded in 1898 and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The employee-owned company works across energy, infrastructure, mining and metals, nuclear, security and environmental markets, and has completed work in more than 160 countries. Bechtel holds the sole EPC contract on Woodside’s Louisiana LNG development on the Calcasieu Ship Channel, where three liquefaction trains and two storage tanks are being built concurrently toward a 2029 first cargo. It also holds a $490 million construction management contract running through June 2034 on VTA’s BART Silicon Valley Phase II extension in San Jose. Earlier work includes Hoover Dam, the Channel Tunnel, and the Jubail industrial city in Saudi Arabia.
Since 1898, Bechtel has worked across eight distinct markets: Energy, Environmental Cleanup, Manufacturing & Technology, Mining & Critical Minerals, National Defense & Security, Nuclear Power, Infrastructure and Renewables. In nuclear alone, the company has designed, built or serviced 150 power plants worldwide since the 1950s, adding more than 76,000 megawatts of generation capacity — including Plant Vogtle’s Units 3 and 4, the first new U.S. reactors built in over 30 years, and TerraPower’s Natrium demonstration reactor now under construction in Wyoming. Its LNG work has covered roughly 30% of the world’s liquefaction capacity, with current energy projects including Rio Grande LNG and the Corpus Christi Liquefaction expansion in Texas. In mining, Bechtel built Chile’s Quebrada Blanca Phase 2 copper mine, which runs a first-of-its-kind desalination plant and is designed to operate on 100% renewable power. On the defense side, Bechtel is partnered with Northrop Grumman on the Sentinel program to modernize U.S. ICBM launch infrastructure, and separately built the Mobile Launcher 2 platform NASA will use for lunar and Mars missions.
The firm’s infrastructure and international résumé is similarly dense: it delivered London’s Elizabeth Line and, decades earlier, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and the original Hoover Dam, its first megaproject, completed in 1936. It’s currently building Poland’s first nuclear power plant and was named delivery partner on the planned Newcastle-to-Sydney high-speed rail line in Australia. Internal units support that project load: Bechtel Equipment Operations, a wholly owned subsidiary founded in 1947 and based in Sugar Land, Texas, handles fleet management and rigging equipment, while its Bechtel Fellows and Distinguished Technical Specialists programs elevate senior engineers to advise on the company’s most technically demanding assignments. With offices across more than 30 U.S. and international locations — including its Reston, Virginia headquarters, plus Houston, Washington, D.C., Denver and Los Angeles domestically, and London, Doha and Riyadh abroad — Bechtel operates in more than 33 countries today under what it calls its Vision, Values & Commitments framework for safety, ethics and sustainability.
