Brendan bechtel biography

Brendan Bechtel is chairman and chief executive officer of Bechtel Group, Inc.

Prior to being elected chairman in April 2017, Brendan was named Bechtel’s chief executive officer in September 2016. He was Bechtel’s president and chief operating officer from 2014–2016. Previously, he  served in executive management and operations roles, including president of the company’s Oil, Gas & Chemicals (OG&C) global business unit, general manager of the OG&C Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) business line, and senior project manager for the Queensland Curtis LNG project, the first of Bechtel's four LNG megaprojects in Australia.

Brendan first began working for the company during summer breaks in high school. After joining the company full time, he took on roles of increasing responsibility in field construction, project management, and executive leadership. Brendan is the 5th generation of the Bechtel family to lead the company.

Brendan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geography from Middlebury College in Vermont. He also earned dual master’s degrees at Stanford University in business and construction engineering and management.

Brendan currently serves on the board of trustees for the National Geographic Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, both in Washington, D.C. Brendan is a member of the Business Roundtable, where he serves on the Infrastructure Committee and the Education & Workforce Committee. He is also a member of the American Society of Corporate Executives. In 2016, Fortune Magazine named Brendan #1 on their annual “40 Under 40” list.

American business executive

Brendan Peters Bechtel (born 1981) is an American businessman who is the chairman and chief executive officer of Bechtel, the second largest construction company in the United States, which has operations in 160 countries. The great-great-grandson of founder Warren A. Bechtel, 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, 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 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. 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 with a Bachelor of Arts 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, he pursued his post-graduate studies at Stanford University, earning both a Master of Business Administration degree and a Master of Science in Engineering degree with a focus on 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 h

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “the very rich are different from you and me,” he was referring to their attitudes and beliefs, not to the way they conduct themselves in business or politics. But he might very well have gone on to observe that great wealth carries with it considerable power that enables the very rich to have their way no matter how badly they act. In The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World, Sally Denton illustrates just how much power the world’s largest construction firm has wielded both in business and in politics, proving itself virtually untouchable by the law.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

The colossus that is Bechtel

Bechtel is a privately owned global company headquartered in San Francisco. In 2015, the company ranked #5 on the Forbes list of America’s largest private companies, with annual revenue of $37 billion. Like the Koch Brothers’ family firm, Koch Industries (#2 on the Forbes list), Bechtel operates outside the scrutiny of financial regulators, so what it says about itself is often difficult to confirm. The firm advertises itself on its web site as having 55,400 employees who have completed 25,000 projects in 160 countries on 7 continents. All that may be true, or at least within reasonable range of the truth. But, as Denton demonstrates in her eye-opening study, much of what the notoriously secretive company says about its history and the way it conducts its affairs is highly questionable.

The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World by Sally Denton ★★★★☆

A fifth-generation member of the family, Brendan Bechtel, now serves as President and Chief Operating Officer. (An outsider is CEO.) The company traces its beginning to 1898 when Brendan’s great-great grandfather, Warren Bechtel, began constructing railroads in the Oklahoma Territory with a team of mules. However, the company didn’t rise to national prominence until the Great Depression, whe

Brendan Bechtel is chairman and chief executive officer of Bechtel Group, Inc. (Bechtel). Prior to being elected chairman in April 2017, Brendan was named Bechtel’s chief executive officer in September 2016. He was Bechtel’s president and chief operating officer from 2014–2016. Brendan first began working for the company during summer breaks in high school. After joining the company full time, he took on roles of increasing responsibility in field construction, project management, and executive leadership. Brendan is the 5th generation of the Bechtel family to lead the company. Brendan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geography from Middlebury College. He also earned two master’s degrees from Stanford: an MBA and an MSE in construction engineering and management. Brendan serves on the board of directors of the Business Roundtable, where he chairs the Infrastructure Committee. Brendan is a trustee of the National Geographic Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and he serves on the board of advisors of Fremont Group. He is also a member of the American Society of Corporate Executives and the Council on Foreign Relations.   Brendan is based in the Washington, DC area.