3 US construction industry execs claim spots on Forbes' billionaires list

Dive Brief:

Forbes has published its 2016 ranking of the world's billionaires, and three business leaders from the construction/engineering industry made the list.
At number 262 is Diane Hendricks (net worth of $5.1 billion), co-founder of building material company ABC Supply. Coming in tied at number 638 are Riley Bechtel ($2.7 billion) and Stephen Bechtel, Jr. ($2.7 billion), both spending their careers at family engineering firm Bechtel.
The Forbes list features 1,810 billionaires with a total combined net worth of $6.48 trillion. Forbes reported that 1,186 of those on the list made their own fortunes, 228 inherited riches and 396 inherited some money but are growing wealth themselves.

Dive Insight:

Diane Hendricks co-founded roofing and exterior building materials company ABC Supply with her husband and kept growing the company after he passed away. According to Forbes, under Hendricks' leadership, ABC has seen its sales double from less than $3 billion in 2007 to nearly $6 billion in 2015. Hendricks has also expanded her holdings to manufacturing, real estate and transportation interests.

Stephen Bechtel Jr. — as well as his son Riley Bechtel — held the top position at Bechtel, the family's private engineering company, before his retirement in 1990. Both Stephen and Riley own 20% of Bechtel, the nation's largest engineering and construction company, which has $37 billion in revenue. Riley Bechtel retired as CEO in 2014 after handing the company reins over to his son Brendan.

Bechtel has built a wide variety of high-profile projects, such as the Hoover Dam and Channel Tunnel, and recently completed tunneling for the largest engineering project in Europe, the Crossrail high capacity railway.

Brendan Bechtel, now president and COO of the mammoth construction company, made headlines late last year with an op-ed piece in USA Today in which he implored U.S. federal and state leaders to make the country’s infrastructure a top priority so that future generations don’t "inherit a crumbling, unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, productivity-choking system several generations old." In his letter, Bechtel also advocated for the use of public-private partnerships (P3s) to fund, build and maintain infrastructure projects around the country.