There are two Washington
transitions taking place-one in D.C. and one in Idaho. The new Washington
administration of George W. Bush is nominating its top twenty executive
appointments in DC and in Idaho, the new Washington Group of twenty legacy
companies is forging ahead as a single unified company dedicated to a
shared vision. Washington Group is the new name Morrison Knudsen gave
its 38,000 employees after acquiring Raytheon Engineers and Constructors
and Westinghouse Government Services.
Washington Group
International, Inc. is organized into five operating units reporting to
the Office of the Chairman consisting of Chairman and CEO, Dennis Washington,
President- Steve Hanks and COO - Vince Kontny. " The strength of
our operations is in our people," Hanks told World Cogeneration.
"At every level, we know how to succeed in this business." Hanks
has been instrumental in the development of the company's growth strategy.
He played integral roles in the acquisition of the Westinghouse operations
in 1999 and the acquisition of Raytheon E & C in 2000.
The operating unit
for the power market combines Raytheon's knowledge of turnkey merchant
plants with Morrison Knudsen's expertise in nuclear plants and hydro projects.
Washington Group draws upon Raytheon's 215,000 megawatts of generating
capacity worldwide, using virtually all technologies for utilities, independent
power producers, and industrial cogenerators. Over 1,000 generating units
have been constructed for baseload, expansions, and retrofits. The total
encompassed 167,850 megawatts in North America, 32,600 megawatts in Asia-Pacific,
7,000 megawatts in the Middle East and Africa, 4,000 megawatts in Europe,
and 3,500 megawatts in Latin America.
Washington Group
is constructing two gas-fired power plants for Sithe in Massachusetts.
The plants are being built in parallel. A 1,600-megawatt plant at the
Mystic Station in Everett, just north of Boston, and an 800-megawatt plant
is being built at the Fore River Station Weymouth, about 10 miles south
of Boston. Washington Power is achieving cost and schedule efficiencies
on the two projects. The designs of the two combined-cycle plants are
nearly identical, and the major equipment going into each plant is the
same. The power islands are being constructed in 800-megawatt blocks,
with each block consisting of two gas turbines, two heat recovery steam
generators, and one steam turbine. The schedules for the two sites are
staggered. Major equipment items are delivered directly to each site.
Washington Power
is optimizing its resources and assuring continuity by assigning a single
supervising discipline engineer to both projects.
In the nuclear field,
the Washington Group can lay claim to having worked on every US nuclear
generating station. They have engineered over 50 commercial nuclear generating
units with 35,000 megawatts including units in Brazil, Italy, Japan, and
Taiwan.
Washington-led Steam
Generator Team (SGT) is a market leader in replacing steam generators
in nuclear power plants, during routine plant outages. SGT, a joint venture
of Washington and Duke Engineering & Services, recently completed three
replacement projects-Wisconsin Electric Power Company's Point Beach Nuclear
Power Plant, at Florida Power & Light's St. Lucie Nuclear Power Station,
and at Consolidated Edison's Indian Point 2 plant in New York.
The SGT team is preparing
for a replacement project at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant of
Baltimore Gas and Electric Company and has started preliminary work for
a replacement project at a nuclear plant in North Carolina.
Washington Group
continues to serve the United States Departments of Energy and Defense.
Washington Group operates the DOE's Savannah River Site to help maintain
the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, and environmental cleanup and
remediation of the 310-square-mile site. Other operations for the DOE
include: West Valley Nuclear Services, which has served as the primary
management and operations contractor for the West Valley Demonstration
Project in western New York. The site was the only commercial nuclear
reprocessing facility to operate in the United States and the Waste Isolation
Division, as the management and operating contractor at the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The WIPP is designed to
permanently dispose of 6.2 million cubic feet of defense-generated transuranic
waste in 250- million year-old salt beds.
Washington Group
also serves as the DOE's project management contractor at the Weldon Spring
site in Missouri and is providing construction and engineering services
at Oak Ridge, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and the Idaho National Engineering
& Environmental Laboratory. Opportunities with the DOE and DOD are expected
to reach more than $20 billion over the next five years.
In hydro, Washington
Group is building a 650 foot-high dam and 345-megawatt hydroelectric plant
at San Roque on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Itaipu hydro-electric
development with a capacity of 12,600 megawatts, on the Brazil-Paraguay
border is the largest-ever hydroelectric development; Washington Group
has coordinated engineering and construction.
In transmission
and distribution, Washington Group has built over 25,000 miles of power
lines. Washington led a joint venture that completed the 1,000-mile-long
power lines across the jungles of what then was known as Zaire. This extra-high-voltage
line is one of the world's longest transmission lines.
The inaugural meeting
of the new Washington Group was held recently in the corporate headquarters
in Boise during a two-day Worldwide Leadership Conference attended by
120 senior executives to discuss the $5 billion in revenues and $6.6 billion
in backlog orders.
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