They used to call it good old American know-how, and Bechtel embodies the concept. What it knows is how to build things—big things. With $40 billion in annual revenue, Bechtel has been constructing epic projects for 109 years, ranging from the Hoover Dam to the Trans-Arabian Pipeline to, today, a massive liquefied-natural-gas terminal in Louisiana and a $10.1 billion project to burrow a subway into the Saudi Arabian sands beneath Riyadh. As editor-at-large Shawn Tully puts it (see “The Master of Megaprojects”), “Bechtel has arguably changed the face of the physical world more than any other company, anywhere.”