Chicago Bridge and Iron Company

Corporate headquarters and leadership

As of February 2017, the corporate headquarters were located in The Hague, in the Netherlands, with the administrative headquarters being located in the Woodlands, Texas. Current corporate officers are:

Founding until World War II

CB&I was founded in 1889 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, as Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, when Horace E. Horton, a bridge designer, agreed to merge business with George and William Wheelock of the Kansas City Bridge and Iron Company. While initially involved in bridge design and construction, CB&I turned its focus to bulk liquid storage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coinciding with the western expansion of railroads across the United States and the discovery of oil in the Southwest. CB&I quickly became known for design engineering and field construction of elevated water storage tanks, above-ground tanks for storage of petroleum and refined products, refinery process vessels and other steel plate structures. As such, CB&I supported the expansion of oil exploration outside the US, starting operations in South America in 1924, in Asia two years later and in the Middle East in 1939.

During World War II, CB&I was selected to build Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs), which carried troops and supplies to American and Allied troops fighting in Europe and the Pacific theater. CB&I was chosen because of their reputation and skills, particularly welding. Since the coastal shipyards were busy building large vessels for the war effort, such as aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers, there was no alternative but to use the inland waterways and shipyards for the production of smaller ships. As a result of these and other wartime production activities, CB&I ranked 92nd among US corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

CB&I has been involved in a number of changes during the past two decades. It was acquired by Praxair in 1996; Praxair kept a chemical subsidiary and spun off CB&I as a Dutch-incorporated company the next year. CB&I headquarters moved from Chicago to Houston, Texas in 2001 and then to the Hague, Netherlands when Texas enacted a franchise tax.

Since 2000, it has acquired a number of companies. Most recently in 2012, CB&I agreed to buy The Shaw Group for about US$3 billion, completing the acquisition in February 2013.

The subsidiary that was formed as a result, CB&I Stone Webster—a result of Shaw Groups earlier acquisition of Stone & Webster during its bankruptcy—was again sold, in January 2016, to Westinghouse Electric Co., for US$ 229M.

Historic structures

The company built a number of bridges and other works that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These works include (with varying attribution):

Company innovations

Over the course of the company's history, CB&I has developed many technologies and achieved a number of industry milestones. These include the first floating-roof tank for the oil industry (1923), the first spherical pressure vessel (1923), the first double-wall liquid natural gas (LNG) storage tank (1958), the first site-assembled thick wall steel nuclear reactor vessel (1966), the first marine LNG storage and distribution terminal in the US (1971), the world's largest steel water reservoir (1986), the world's largest vacuum distillation tower (1999) and the world's largest thermal energy storage tank (2009).

CB&I, 2000-present

In late 2000, CB&I embarked on a series of acquisitions that have expanded its services to encompass the entire hydrocarbon industry, from conceptual design through technology licensing, engineering and construction, to final commissioning and technical services. CB&I acquired Lummus Global from ABB on November 19, 2007, adding approximately 3,000 employees to the CB&I payroll. CB&I announced the acquisition of The Shaw Group in 2012, which added pipe, steel and module fabrication solutions as well as engineering and construction capabilities in the power generation industry that included fossil and nuclear construction. The transaction was completed on February 13, 2013. In 2015, CB&I announced that they are selling their Nuclear Construction division to Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of Toshiba, for $229 million.

As of this date, CB&I's global business groups are:

Recent major projects

Examples of recent major projects around the world include:

In November 2004, CB&I was awarded a contract by one of the world's largest suppliers of wind turbines to fabricate 150 tubular steel support towers for wind turbines that were installed in wind farms in the western United States. The towers support 1.5-megawatt wind turbines, which are the largest wind turbines assembled in the United States and the most widely sold and tested megawatt-class wind turbines in the world. In April 2012, CB&I was awarded a contract for a petrochemicals expansion project in Geismar, Louisiana, including the license and basic engineering for the ethylene technology.

Controversy

CB&I was revealed as a subscriber to the UK's Consulting Association, exposed in 2009 for operating an illegal construction industry blacklist; CB&I was one of 14 companies issued with enforcement notices by the UK Information Commissioner's Office. A CB&I employee consulted the blacklist more than 900 times in 2007 alone, a 2010 employment tribunal was told.