Bechtel Group, Inc.
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Bechtel Group Inc. is a US construction, engineering and support services company founded in 1898, and is a privately owned corporation. Originally supporting primarily railroad construction, Bechtel started working on "superprojects" when it worked on the Hoover Dam in the 1930s.
During World War II, Bechtel built the Alaska-Canada highway, several shipyards and other large projects. After the war, Bechtel's work included pipelines in Saudi Arabia and other industrial facilities. The company is particularly well-known for delivering "turnkey" projects, taking a site from bare ground to a finished project.
While the majority of Bechtel's business is commercial, it is also a large defense contractor, building facilities all over the world. Bechtel is the current (2004) operator of the Ronald Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein atoll. Bechtel is also the contractor working on decomissioning and cleaning up the nuclear reactors at Chernobyl, and dismantling and securing weapons systems in the former Soviet Union.
Bechtel has contracts at numerous U.S. Department of Energy sites, ranging from from nuclear waste cleanup to research and development projects.