US construction tech investor targets Europe

San Francisco-based Brick & Mortar Ventures, a provider of funding for construction technology startups, is expanding into Europe with an office in Paris.

B&M founder Darren Bechtel (second right) is looking to invest in European tech startups

The office – which opens for business in July – will be run by Guillaume Bazouin, who was previously head of startup and entrepreneurship programmes at Leonard, the ‘foresight and innovation’ platform launched by contractor Vinci in 2017.

According to Brick & Mortar, it will be the first US construction tech investment firm in France. Its aim is to inject investment capital into early-stage construction tech startups in the EU.

The company said that, thanks to the EU’s “progressive” laws to combat the climate crisis and the number of startups there, Europe is ripe with investment opportunities across the construction tech sector.

Brick & Mortar Ventures (B&M) is itself a relatively new business. It was founded in 2015 by Darren Bechtel, a fifth-generation scion of the family behind the eponymous privately-owned contractor that celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.

B&M invests in emerging companies developing new software and hardware solutions for users in the architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities management sectors.

Its investors include leading companies in the construction value chain including Cemex and Autodesk.

https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/us-construction-tech-investor-targets-europe

>>18827834

Bechtel family

$8.3B

2020 America's Richest Families Net Worth

as of 12/16/20

Bechtel, the $21.8 billion (revenues) engineering and construction business based in Virginia, has been family run for five generations.

The company was founded in 1889 in San Francisco by Warren Bechtel, who started out grading railroad track beds in Oklahoma.

Bechtel has built landmarks from the Hoover Dam to the Channel Tunnel to a post-meltdown confinement shelter for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The company is led by Brendan Bechtel, who became CEO in 2016 and chairman in 2017; his father, Riley Bechtel, stepped down as CEO in 2014.

https://www.forbes.com/profile/bechtel/

>>18827834

>>18827842

Bechtel

Bechtel Corporation (/ˈbɛktəl/) is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia.[3][4] As of 2022, the Engineering News-Record ranked Bechtel as the second largest construction company in the United States.[5]

In January 1931, Bechtel joined other contractors in the west to form Six Companies, Inc., a consortium created to bid for a contract from the U.S. government to construct Hoover Dam. Six Companies won the bid in March and construction began in the summer of 1931.[7][8]

Warren Bechtel died unexpectedly in 1933 while in Moscow on business. He was succeeded by his son, Stephen Bechtel Sr., who became both the head of Bechtel and chief executive of the Hoover Dam project. Under his leadership, the Hoover Dam was finished in 1935. The project was the largest of its kind in U.S. history at the time and Bechtel's first megaproject.[9][14][15]

During World War II, the United States Maritime Commission invited the company to bid for a contract to build half of their order of 60 cargo ships. The company had no prior experience in shipbuilding, but bid for the entire 60 ships.[14][16] Between 1941 and 1945, Bechtel's wartime shipyards, including Marinship and Calship, built 560 vessels. Bechtel also worked on a pipeline from the Yukon to Alaska called Canol for the United States Department of War during this period.[17]

Bechtel's first job outside the U.S. was building the Mene Grande pipeline in Venezuela in 1940. In 1947, Bechtel began construction on what was then the world's longest oil pipeline, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, which began in Saudi Arabia, ran across Jordan and Syria, and ended in Lebanon,[14][16][19] followed by the Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline from Kirkuk, also to the Mediterranean.[20] The company continued to expand globally throughout the 1940s, particularly in the Middle East.[12][16]

In 1949, Bechtel began working with nuclear power after being contracted to build the Experimental Breeder Reactor I in Idaho. The company later built the United States' first privately financed commercial nuclear power plant, the Dresden Generating Station, for Commonwealth Edison in Illinois in 1957.[10][21][22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel

>>18827834

>>18827842

>>18827852

There's more here. Definitely something sus with Darren Bechtel/Cemex.

>The company said that, thanks to the EU’s “progressive” laws to combat the climate crisis and the number of startups there, Europe is ripe with investment opportunities across the construction tech sector.

How could progressive laws make the investment opportunities better?