Virginia-based Bechtel announced in a press release this week that Stephen Bechtel Jr., who served three decades as CEO of the privately-held company that bears his family’s name, died Monday at age 95.
In 1960 Stephen Bechtel Jr. became CEO of the company started by his grandfather in 1898, according to the Washington Post, and would continue as its chief executive until 1990 when he turned 65 and was succeeded in the top post by his son. He continued to serve on the board of directors for the engineering, operations and construction giant until 2018, and by that time his grandson, Brendan Bechtel, had taken over as CEO.
Stephen Bechtel Jr. started out at his grandfather’s company as a field engineer in 1948 and during his tenure as CEO would see the organization’s sales increase 11-fold, according to a Washington Post obituary Tuesday. Projects built during his tenure at the company’s helm ranged from the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco to the King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia.
Bechtel currently has a multibillion-dollar contract to construct the Waste Treatment Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state. It is also the lead partner in Consolidated Nuclear Security, the outgoing management and operations contractor for the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, which are owned by the DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
