Dive Brief:
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Brendan Bechtel, the newly installed CEO of construction and engineering giant Bechtel, was ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's annual list of the top 40 business "disrupters" under the age of 40. He represents the fifth generation of family leadership in the business.
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The 35-year-old Bechtel is navigating the 118-year-old company, which generated revenues of $40 billion in 2015, through financial and competitive challenges as well as planning for a future that includes nuclear energy, smart infrastructure and low-carbon building strategies, according to Fortune.
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The construction industry had another name on the list with Caterpillar Chief of Analytics Morgan Vawter, also 35 years old, who is bringing the equipment giant into the digital age by incorporating drones and sensor-based equipment monitoring systems in the company's business model.
Dive Insight:
Bechtel took over the reins of the company on Sept. 1, earlier than scheduled, when his father, former CEO Riley Bechtel, resigned after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Brendan Bechtel, who holds an MBA and a master's degree in engineering from Stanford University, previously ran the company's oil and gas division.
Infrastructure, and its state of disrepair in America, is among the business areas targeted by the younger Bechtel. He grabbed industry attention last year with a USA Today editorial calling on lawmakers to increase infrastructure funding. He said that the nation's roads and bridges represent an "unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, productivity-choking system," and urged Congress to embrace the private-public partnership as a way to improve those conditions. P3s often see the private sector step up and provide financing for the construction of public buildings and new infrastructure, relieving pressure on governmental entities and allowing them to spread their limited funds among a larger number of projects. He also asked lawmakers to invest in "smart" infrastructure that can respond to changing environmental conditions in real time.
Bechtel launched its own P3 business unit this year, with the Edmonton Valley Line LRT in Alberta, Canada, as its first project. In fact, in his op-ed piece, Bechtel wrote that the U.S. should look to Canada as a model of how to use P3s to tackle infrastructure projects.