How We Do It
Zero
Incident Goal
We strive to achieve zero occupational injuries and illnesses, damage to property, and harm to the environment and local communities.
Bechtel’s success over the last 125 years is a testament to the quality of our people and their incredible talents, from engineers and project managers, to skilled craft professionals and construction experts. We seek colleagues with diverse and global perspectives who live for a challenge and are powered by curiosity and the desire to make a difference.
And we invest in their success. Bechtel works every day to foster a culture that empowers every colleague to do their best work and reach their full potential. We encourage colleagues to explore, think innovatively, and pursue opportunities to grow professionally.
At Bechtel, we place safety and wellbeing above all. It’s a core value of ours. Every day, tens of thousands of colleagues go to work on Bechtel projects around the world. Nothing is more important than ensuring that they, and those who live in the communities where we work, return home safely to their families at the end of the day.
We believe that every on-the-job injury and environmental incident is preventable. Our commitment to preventing incidents is integrated into every aspect of our planning and work execution through our risk-based Environmental, Safety, and Health (ES&H) Management System. This system requires a relentless focus on protecting people, ensuring consistent execution, and continuous improvement.
We strive to achieve zero occupational injuries and illnesses, damage to property, and harm to the environment and local communities.
We establish ES&H leadership at all levels and functional groups, and encourage individual ownership and responsibility for program effectiveness.
We consistently apply safe work practices and measures to protect the environment and local communities.
We measure and evaluate our performance so we can continually improve, supporting best practices, quality, and innovation while complying with regulatory, corporate, and project requirements.
We select partners who share our values and equally demonstrate a commitment to "Zero Incident Performance."
Our longstanding commitment to zero incidents has enabled us to steadily reduce recordable and lost time incident rates. Our rates are among the lowest in the industry and significantly outperform the comparable industry benchmarks. Our 2022 total recordable incident rate was 0.192, a historic low for Bechtel. Total recordable incident rate is a standard safety measure used by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration that reflects the number of recordable injuries per 100 full-time workers during a one-year period.
Our safety culture is built on decades of experience developing and implementing the training, equipment, processes, and procedures needed to perform our work responsibly—many of which have helped to define new industry standards. We're proud of what we've achieved, but we know our work in this area will never be done. That’s why today, we’re helping to transfer knowledge and best practices to our industry colleagues and partners in the regions where we work, ensuring safety is a universal commitment.
In Egypt, for example, we are joining BP, Petrojet, and the Egyptian General Petroleum Company to establish the first advanced training center for safety in Ain Sokhna. The training center will help standardize safe working practices in the Egyptian petroleum sector. Bechtel will conduct training in accordance with the latest international standards for safety while improving adherence to these standards and promoting technical trades in the surrounding communities.
The mental health of our colleagues is an essential component of their safety and wellbeing.
Our efforts to elevate and address mental health, including the Bechtel Mental Health Program—a critical aspect of ES&H—and Human Centered Performance training, aim to remove the stigma associated with mental health and illness, provide guidance on maintaining a healthy mental wellbeing, show colleagues how to seek assistance and build emotional resilience, and offer a framework for incorporating mental health into our project Safety & Health Management Plans.
At the Corpus Christi Liquefaction (CCL) project for Cheniere in Texas, for example, we trained over 100 Bechtel and Cheniere colleagues to become mindful mental health first aiders dedicated to supporting the mental health of all team members on the project.
As a global company, Bechtel has long been home to a vibrant multitude of nationalities, cultures, ethnicities, and life experiences. This diversity has made us a more trusted partner, more effective problem solvers and innovators, and a more attractive destination for leading talent.
We are committed to being a company where every colleague feels that they belong—where colleagues feel part of “One Team,” respected and rewarded for what they bring, supported in pursuing their goals, invested in our values and purpose, and treated equitably.
“We have a term in India, unity and diversity. To me, that term perfectly fits Bechtel. We are such diverse people across the globe. But what threads us all together is a Bechtel culture.
”-Tara Pillai Project Manager, bechtel.org
Our Business Resource Groups (BRGs) play an active role in helping us understand and address the dynamic needs of our colleagues, customers, and the communities we serve. They are a vital component of our global D&I efforts, driving colleague engagement, providing insights and opportunities, and bridging cultural differences. We have eight BRGs, whose memberships keep growing.
In 2022, Women@Bechtel held a day-long Women’s Leadership Conference bringing together Bechtel leaders, customers, and colleagues to explore themes of inclusion and empowerment to help women thrive professionally. Speakers included leaders from Bechtel as well as industry partners, such as Tellurian Inc., Heliogen, HIF USA, General Electric, Malta, British Petroleum, and the Society of Women Engineers. More than 150 colleagues from the U.S., U.K., Chile, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries joined the event in person, with hundreds more participating remotely.
Progress on diversity and inclusion is a collective challenge. We are proud to collaborate with external partners who share our commitment to diversity and inclusion, and advancing underrepresented communities across STEM fields.
In partnership with Catalyst, Bechtel launched the Men Advocating for Real Change (MARC) Dialogue Teams program in 2020. The program is designed to inspire and equip colleagues to leverage their unique opportunities as advocates for gender equity—helping to support and ensure an inclusive workplace. To date, nearly 900 Bechtel colleagues have completed the MARC program.
In addition to our global D&I programs, we have also created region-specific programs to support diversity at the local level in the communities where we operate across the world.
In 2022, Bechtel became the first in the construction industry in the U.K. to receive certification under the ISO 30415 in Human Resource Management: Diversity and Inclusion standard. The standard covers actions, principles, measures, and associated accountabilities and responsibilities, and considers each workplace’s unique context. The U.K. team was also included in the list of Top 100 Most Inclusive Workplaces by the U.K.’s National Centre for Diversity.
And in Chile, the team recently completed an audit to receive the “Sello Iguala Conciliación” designation from the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, a national certification known as NCh3262 for workplaces that advocate for gender equity and work-life balance. To achieve certification, Bechtel implemented an action plan that included workshops for employees and updated internal policies to support inclusion, identify gender pay gaps, and prevent workplace harassment.
We are committed to providing colleagues with the tools that foster learning and maximize individual performance. At Bechtel, colleagues can expect many training and development opportunities to learn new skills, gain certifications, and advance their careers. Our approach combines Bechtel-designed training, industry programs, and training developed by the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER).
Bechtel has previously collaborated with Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) to support the participation and success of women in the U.K. STEM workforce. WISE helped ensure our job descriptions were written to be inclusive, which has since resulted in more than 20% of new hires coming from diverse populations.
In 2019, we created bechtel.org, a social enterprise to utilize our company’s unique engineering and construction expertise to improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people living in underserved communities around the world. We place immense value on the growth and development opportunities bechtel.org affords our people.
Around the world, Bechtel colleagues have the opportunity to join a bechtel.org project and use their skill sets to pursue innovative ideas and solutions in mission-aligned areas such as electrification and digital connectivity, food security, land regeneration, and climate-resilient housing, all to support community wellbeing. The experience allows them to transfer their knowledge and experience into commercial projects when their work with bechtel.org is finished, supporting career growth and making our most valuable assets—our people—even stronger.
In our hiring process, we’re recruiting and attracting more diverse candidates than ever before. We are training colleagues in hiring and recruiting positions to recognize possible biases through a “recruiting through a diversity lens” training, helping them become more aware of potential biases when interviewing candidates and making hiring decisions.
In Saudi Arabia, we have 260 female Bechtel professionals working at NEOM in roles ranging from planning to construction.
“I am so honored that Bechtel selected me as the first Saudi female to work in safety. I represent a new generation of Saudi women.
”-Hadeel Bedaiwi ES&H Specialist, Bechtel