The Family That Builds For the U.S. Government
The Bechtel Corporation has been a family business and government construction contractor for a century. After declining revenue abroad, it turns increasingly to domestic projects in the U.S.
The privately-held Bechtel Corporation, led by the eponymous Bechtel family, is one of the world's largest construction and engineering contractors. In 2022, the Northern Virginia-based company had 55,000 employees, grossed $17.5 billion in revenue, and was the twentieth-largest private company in the U.S.1 In 2023, it was ranked the second-largest U.S. construction contractor after only the Turner Corporation, which is a subsidiary of a publicly-traded German company.2 The Bechtel family itself had a net worth of $8.3 billion in 2020.3 Bechtel is one of a small number of companies specialized in delivering complex megaprojects that would be too financially risky for most firms and, in its history dating back to 1898, has worked on the Hoover Dam, the Channel Tunnel connecting Britain to France, and the majority of U.S. nuclear plants.