August 15, 2006

Mountainview Power Plant, Redlands, California

Laszlo von Lazar, Bechtel Power Corp.

Ownership merry-go-round

To its credit, Bechtel refused to abandon hope that Mountainview could be completed. In March 2003, InterGen—a former Shell-Bechtel subsidiary—purchased the project. The change in ownership brought new challenges, including InterGen's preference to restart the project, rather than suspend it. Then, out of the blue, in March 2004, SCE stepped in to purchase Mountainview and its permits and contracts from InterGen. Announcing that construction of the project would go forward immediately, SCE and Bechtel assembled a project team and began the daunting task of developing a detailed restart plan under a stepped-up schedule. Completion of both Units 3 and 4 (which were designated to differentiate them from the retired San Bernardino Units 1 and 2) was targeted for the end of 2005.

Only hours after closure of the Mountain-view transaction, construction work that had begun under AES in 2001 resumed, and the core site team met for the first time soon thereafter. Bechtel hit the ground running when work resumed. It did extensive inspections of the equipment and the site and put together an execution plan for everything required to get construction going again, including the necessary remediation and rework.

Thanks to a detailed execution plan put into effect on day one, the site was cleaned up, previously delivered equipment was reconditioned, and the remaining equipment was ordered. Bechtel addressed the problems that arose from letting the plant stand idle for two years (Figure 2), and many of the steps taken to resume work after the suspension contributed to the plant's quick commissioning (Figure 3).