MAY 2008: AROUND THE STATE
CH2M Hill
wins $5.25 billion contract on Panama Canal
CORVALLIS An
engineering firm that started as a collaboration between an
Oregon State University professor and three of his former
students has won the contract of a lifetime: to manage the
$5.25 billion redevelopment of the Panama Canal.
CH2M Hill was founded in 1946 in Corvallis and has grown to
24,000 employees and $5 billion in annual revenues. It
transferred headquarters to Colorado in the early 1980s but has
maintained a strong presence in Corvallis, with 370 local jobs
and a lively calendar of events at OSU’s CH2M Hill Alumni
Center.
The company specializes in mega-projects, none with stronger
name recognition than the Panama Canal. The canal was praised
as the greatest engineering feat in history when it was
completed in 1914, but it must be expanded to make room for the
gargantuan ships of the future.
Mark Carlson, design delivery director for CH2M Hill’s
Corvallis office, calls the project a “huge
endeavor” that will entail overseeing hundreds of
engineering contracts and dealing with any surprises that are
bound to pop up in a project of such magnitude.
No one from Corvallis has been transferred to Panama yet, but
the Oregon group has a history of leading up major efforts. Ray
Topping, a longtime Corvallis employee, left several years ago
to help manage the $12.5 billion preparation of London for the
2012 Olympics. From there he moved on to the Middle East, where
he is working on designing a $22 billion, car-free,
carbon-neutral city near Abu Dhabi.
This is not a company that thinks
small.
BEN JACKLET
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