Dive Brief:

• In a nod to family tradition — albeit on an accelerated schedule — 35-year-old Brendan Bechtel will take over the reins of Bechtel, one of the world's largest engineering and construction firms, as CEO starting September 1, the company announced this week. 
• The current Bechtel president and COO represents the fifth generation of Bechtels to serve as CEO, and he has been training in different positions within the company for several years in preparation for this new role.
• Circumstances altered the company succession plan when Brendan Bechtel's father, former CEO Riley Bechtel, resigned after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Since then, the first non-Bechtel family CEO, Fred Dudley, has led the company while Brendan trained for the job.

Dive Insight:

Brendan Bechtel, who holds an MBA and a masters of engineering from Stanford University, also ran the company's oil and gas business before becoming COO. The fact that Dudley has stepped aside is widely interpreted as a signal that Dudley and the board back Brendan's assumption of the position, according to Fortune.   

Bechtel takes in annual revenue of $40 billion and has built major projects such as the Hoover Dam and the Trans-Arabian Pipeline.The construction company and the Bechtel family are considered industry leaders and have appeared this year on a variety of annual business and wealth ranking lists. Bechtel nabbed the top position on the Engineering News-Record's 2016 Top 400 Contractors for the 18th consecutive year and also landed at No. 7 on Fortune's list of the 25 Most Important Private Companies 2016. In addition, Riley Bechtel and Stephen Bechtel Jr. tied at No. 638, each with a net worth of $2.7 billion, on Forbes' 2016 list of the world's billionaires. 

Brendan Bechtel is also leading the company charge when it comes to public-private partnerships (P3s). Late last year, he penned an op-ed piece for USA Today in which he excoriated the U.S. Congress for its lack of infrastructure initiatives and foresight and urged the body to adopt P3s as a way to repair what he called an "unsafe, environmentally unfriendly, productivity-choking system."

P3s are becoming more popular in the U.S. and are widely seen as a way for public entities to take advantage of private industry's innovation, expertise and access to various financing options while, at the same time, typically leaving them with more cash for additional projects. Bechtel has even launched its own P3 business unit with its first such project, the Edmonton Valley Line LRT in Alberta, Canada.