Big Dig tragedy could stain Bechtel's name

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

For Bechtel Corp., a company that lives by its record and reputation, last week's news from Boston could hardly have been worse.

A young mother of three died beneath falling concrete slabs inside the city's new network of freeway tunnels, designed by a Bechtel joint venture that also supervised construction. Bostonians -- weary of the project's long history of delays, gaffes and ballooning costs -- vented their anger at Bechtel and its subcontractors. The state's attorney general opened an investigation and declared the accident site a crime scene.

But Boston's $14.6 billion Big Dig isn't the only large public project spurring criticism of Bechtel.

In Washington state, the San Francisco company is building a nuclear waste treatment center that may end up $7 billion over its original estimate and six years late.

At the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, a federal investigator last year said the company received about $4 million in incentive fees for work that had been turned in late -- or in poor quality.

A California congressman this spring accused Bechtel of double-billing the federal government for Hurricane Katrina relief work, potentially costing taxpayers $48 million if government auditors hadn't objected.

The company has also spent the past three years working to repair infrastructure in Iraq. However, criticism directed at Bechtel over that project has focused more on the way it received the job -- an unusual, limited bidding competition -- rather than its performance.

You haven't heard the last of this story.