Brendan Peters Bechtel (born 1981) is an American businessman who is the chairman and CEO of the

Bechtel Group, Inc. Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia. , the ''Engineering News-Record'' ranked Bechtel as the sec ...

, the second largest construction company in the United States, which has operations in 160 countries. The great-great-grandson of founder

Warren A. Bechtel Warren Abraham Bechtel (September 12, 1872 – August 28, 1933) was the founder of the Bechtel Corporation, the 2nd largest construction company in the United States as of 2022. Early life Warren Abraham Bechtel was born on September 12, 1872, ...

, he became CEO at the age of 35, and is the fifth generation of the Bechtel family to lead the privately owned company since 1898. Bechtel chairs the infrastructure committee of the

Business Roundtable The Business Roundtable (BRT) is a nonprofit lobbyist association based in Washington, D.C. whose members are chief executive officers of major United States companies. Unlike the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose members are entire businesses, BRT ...

, a lobbying group representing CEOs of some of the largest companies in the country.

Early life and education

Brendan is the son of

Riley P. Bechtel Riley Peart Bechtel CBE (born March 25, 1952) is an American billionaire heir and businessman. He was the chairman of the Bechtel Corporation Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project managem ...

and the eldest of three children. At the age of three, he lived with his family in a trailer at a Bechtel construction site in

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

. He first worked at Bechtel as a paid summer intern when he was 14, the minimum legal working age in California, in the corporate IT group. One of his first jobs was to install security cables for laptops at the company headquarters in San Francisco. In 2003, he graduated from

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all ...

with a degree in geography. According to company rules, as a Bechtel family member, he was not allowed to join Bechtel until he had worked somewhere else full-time for at least two years after college. After working for the nonprofit

Conservation Fund The Conservation Fund is a U.S. nonprofit organization with a dual charter to pursue environmental preservation and economic development. From 2008–2018, it has placed more than 500,000 acres under conservation management through a program wh ...

, he pursued his post-graduate studies at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, earning both an MBA and a master's degree in construction engineering and construction management.

Career

Starting in 2010, Brendan followed a career path within the Bechtel Group designed by the board of directors to test his abilities as a potential future CEO, taking on increasing responsibility in field construction, project management, and executive leadership. One of the

megaproject A megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project. According to the ''Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management'', "Megaprojects are large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost $1 billion or more, take many years to develop and ...

s he helped to manage was the Dulles Corridor Metrorail, the only project he ever "overlapped on" with his sister Katherine, who also works for the company. Before that, he had worked on other Bechtel projects, including the

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a permanently closed nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, on the Pacific coast, in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV. The plant was shut down in 2013 after repla ...

in California. From 2012 to 2013, he oversaw the construction of a $10 billion

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

plant on Curtis Island in

Queensland, Australia ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, living part-time in a workers' camp. Following that assignment, he led Bechtel's largest business, Bechtel Oil, Gas & Chemicals. From 2014 to 2016, he served as president and chief operating officer. Brendan became CEO of Bechtel Group in September 2016, succeeding Bill Dudley. Dudley had been appointed CEO in late 2013, when Riley Bechtel stepped down as CEO four years earlier than planned, after being diagnosed with

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. At the age of 35, Brendan became the second youngest CEO in the history of the company since it was founded by Warren Bechtel in 1898; the youngest was his great-grandfather,

Stephen Bechtel Sr. Stephen Davison Bechtel (September 24, 1900 – March 14, 1989) was the son of Clara Alice West and Warren A. Bechtel, founder of the Bechtel Corporation. He was the president of the company from 1933 to 1960. Early life Stephen Davison Bechte ...

In April 2017, Brendan was elected chairman of Bechtel Group by the company's board of directors, succeeding Riley Bechtel. Since then, Brendan Bechtel has held the dual titles of chairman and CEO. When the company announced that it was moving its headquarters from San Francisco to

Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia and a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Reston's population was 63,226. Founded in 1964, Reston was influenced by the Garden City movem ...

, at the end of 2018, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' noted that Brendan Bechtel was already based in the Reston office, with 1,300 employees. In an interview that year with the ''Washington Business Journal'', he stated that he had no interest in taking the company public, preferring instead to retain more control and focus on profitability without the pressure to achieve "growth for growth's sake".

Recognition

Before taking over as CEO, Brendan was featured in ''Fortune'' magazine, as part of an effort to rebuild the company's image and recruit talent. It was the first time in 30 years that senior executives at Bechtel Group had agreed to in-depth media interviews. In October 2016, he was named in ''Fortune'' magazine's annual "40 Under 40" list. In 2020, the company experienced what Bechtel called "the toughest year in our company's history" and was overtaken by

Turner Construction Turner Construction is an American construction company with presence in 20 countries. It is a subsidiary of the German company Hochtief. It is the largest domestic contractor in the United States as of 2020, with a revenue of $14.41 billion in ...

as the No. 1 contractor in the United States on ENR's Top 400 Contractors List for the first time since 1999, following a decline in revenue across nearly all market sectors.

Board memberships

Brendan Bechtel is on the board of directors of the

and is the chair of its infrastructure committee. He has served as a trustee of the

National Geographical Society The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, and ...

and the

Center for Strategic and International Studies The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. CSIS was founded as the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown University in 1962. The center conducts polic ...

for several years. He is also on the board of advisers for the

Fremont Group Fremont Group is a private investment group based in San Francisco, California, United States. It was formerly known as Bechtel Investments up until 1993, reflecting its ownership by the Bechtel family. In 1993, its name was officially changed to ...

, the private investment office for the Bechtel family, which invests in real estate and venture capital. More recently, he joined the board of two regional business groups, including the

Federal City Council Federal City Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes economic development in the city of Washington, D.C., in the United States. Incorporated on September 13, 1954, it is one of the most powerful private groups in the city, a ...

and The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

Issues advocacy

A strong supporter of

nuclear energy Nuclear energy may refer to: *Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity * Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom *Nuclear potential energy ...

, Brendan Bechtel has stated that he believes it is the only long term alternative to

fossil fuels A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels ...

. He has also been an advocate for the use of public–private partnerships to rebuild America's deteriorating infrastructure. In 2016, he spoke at the

Construction Industry Institute The Construction Industry Institute (CII), based at The University of Texas at Austin, is a non-profit consortium of more than 130 owner, engineering-contractor, and supplier firms from both the public and private arenas. The group aims to enhanc ...

conference, warning that massive cost overruns and delays in megaprojects were threatening the future of the industry.

Lobbying

According to ''

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

'', Brendan Bechtel was able to write off $64 million in taxes in 2018, due to a last-minute change in the wording of the

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 The Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018, , is a congressional revenue act of the United States originally introduced in Congress as the Tax Cuts and Jobs A ...

, which allowed private engineering companies to benefit from pass-through deductions. In April 2020, he was named to President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

's panel of advisers on economic recovery from the global

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. In 2021, he was vocal in opposing President Joe Biden's proposed corporate tax hikes to pay for new public infrastructure. Speaking on behalf of the Business Roundtable, he said that he and other business leaders were in discussions with the Biden administration and with members of Congress, advocating alternative ways to pay for new infrastructure, including user fees, deficit financing, and public-private partnerships.

Personal life

Brendan Bechtel married one month before leaving for Australia to work on the Queensland Curtis LNG project in early 2012. He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife, "a third-generation Washingtonian", and their children, and was inducted into the exclusive

Alfalfa Club The Alfalfa Club is a social club that exists only to hold an annual black tie banquet on the last Saturday of January at the Capital Hilton in Washington D.C., with an after-party at a local restaurant. The banquet, which lasts 4 hours, featur ...

as a new "sprout" in 2017. When taking time off, he enjoys skiing and fishing in California and the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

References

External links

Brendan Bechtel, Chairman and CEO, Bechtel
(company biography) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bechtel, Brendan 1981 births Middlebury College alumni Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni Living people American chief executives Bechtel American civil engineering contractors Stanford University School of Engineering alumni