Building on Air

CIO, July, 2003 by Meridith Levinson

Bechtel Group—the $11.6 billion, 47,000-employee engineering and construction company best known for building the $14.7 billion English Channel Tunnel and the $20 billion Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia, and most recently for receiving a $34.6 million contract to rebuild Iraq's war-crippled infrastructure—was experiencing a precipitous decline in new contracts in 2001. The value of new work had plummeted from a high of $23 billion in 1999 to $14.5 billion in 2000 and to $9.3 billion in 2001. The weakening of the U.S. economy and the reputation Bechtel earned in Massachusetts over its alleged mismanagement of the $14 billion-plus Central Artery Tunnel Project (a.k.a. the Big Dig) seemingly had combined to hurt the giant's financial performance.

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