How the Bechtel Brief showcases world-class work and connects a global workforce

The Bechtel Brief brings to life the accomplishments of 20,000+ professional staff and tens of thousands of craft professionals across 33 countries — celebrating milestones, sharing stories, and highlighting the global impact of Bechtel’s work.

👋 Meet Bechtel: A 128‑year‑old engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. Its teams regularly rotate across job sites and regions to tackle some of the toughest, never‑been‑done challenges on the planet.

• Bechtel’s workforce reflects a wide range of institutional knowledge, from professionals with decades at the company, including project managers with an average tenure of 18 years, to a growing cohort of new talent joining each year.
• The company’s portfolio includes world-renowned, technically ambitious efforts such as the Hoover Dam, the Channel Tunnel connecting the U.K. and France, the Riyadh Metro in Saudi Arabia, the only new U.S. nuclear reactors to come online in three decades, and NASA’s new launch platform, which will support the most ambitious human spaceflight missions of this century.

💡The challenge: With teams working across projects, regions, and roles, Bechtel saw an opportunity to better connect the work happening across the organization:

• Sharing complex work at scale: Bechtel’s workforce constantly delivers massive, complex projects globally, and important breakthroughs and best practices are always emerging. The goal was to better capture and share that work so it could be understood and reused across teams.
• Keeping colleagues aligned and informed: With work happening around the world, Bechtel needed a clear way to keep employees aligned on what’s happening across the company, beyond their immediate teams or job sites.
• Reinforcing culture through communication: Bechtel wanted its all-staff communication to do more than inform. They wanted to reinforce culture, foster pride in the company’s work, and support continuous learning that strengthens both people and projects worldwide.   

👍 The solution: In 2023, Bechtel partnered with Axios HQ to reimagine its all-staff newsletter as a weekly alignment engine for its workforce. The team designed The Bechtel Brief to:

• Reflect the magnitude of the work: Bring Bechtel’s complex engineering and construction work to life using Smart Brevity storytelling — explaining technical concepts clearly and accessibly, supported by compelling photography and video captured on project sites around the world.
• Provide more context, in one place: In a fast-paced work environment like Bechtel, employees needed timely, accessible context delivered directly to them — not spread across multiple channels — in a format that’s quick to read and worth opening every week.
• Define one Bechtel voice: Establish a consistent, recognizable voice across five business units delivering highly specialized work — creating a shared experience that resonates whether it’s someone’s first day on the job or their twentieth year with the company.
  

➕ Yes, and: Bechtel worked with Axios HQ to establish editorial guidelines and invested in Smart Brevity training, including a custom workshop for the editorial team. 

• This created a consistent voice and a repeatable way to communicate complex work clearly across the company. 

• Today, a six-person editorial team runs the Bechtel Brief using a newsroom model — sourcing stories across the business and using Axios HQ engagement data, comments, and feedback to keep a pulse on what colleagues want to hear and shape future editions.

📊 Key comms and business results: 

In just two years, the Bechtel Brief has become a go-to source for insight, alignment, and connection across the company.

• Engagement surged and stayed high: Open rates increased more than 18% from the previous newsletter and now average around 80% week over week.
• Pride and shared understanding: Pride in Bechtel and excitement about the company’s future consistently appear in colleague feedback, reflecting the Brief’s role in strengthening connection and alignment.

💬 What Bechtel employees are saying:

• “Always informative and educational on the immense impact that Bechtel has on employees’ lives, the communities that we work in, and the benefits to the world!”
• “In awe of everything we do and the way this newsletter is put together week over week. Thank you for sharing out all the wonderful news that makes us proud to be Bechtel!”
• “This news digest is the highlight of my week. So exciting to be part of the Bechtel family, learn about these most fascinating projects – proof of engineering ingenuity around the world! Thank you!”
• “This was my first edition of the Bechtel Brief and being on my first swing it gave an excellent overview of what's happening, culture and values.”
• “I’ve spent 42 years with the firm. The Brief is an excellent source of information AND pride. Of course, I remember the old Bechtel Briefs hard copy magazines. You’ve preserved some of their approach to recounting our rich history alongside current project achievements but the freshness and “light” style of your writing makes for an extraordinarily engaging product. It’s especially pleasing to read comments of new employees who are able to pick up the emotional component of being a Bechtel team member through your publication. THAT may well be your most valuable impact on the firm and its future. WELL DONE!”
• “I particularly love the photos and insights into other projects. How succinctly this is written is truly amazing. Super impressive. I get so much out of these.”

💼 Closing thoughts from Rayna Farrell, who leads Bechtel’s Corporate Affairs & Marketing function, shares:

• “What excites me most about the Bechtel Brief is how it reflects the way we work — pushing boundaries, collaborating, and always learning. It’s more than a tool for sharing information; it surfaces insights, celebrates ingenuity, and fosters a shared understanding across a workforce tackling the world’s toughest challenges. In a global organization, clarity and alignment are not just nice to have — they are essential. The Brief makes both possible while reinforcing the values and culture that make our people — and this company — truly extraordinary.”  

Bechtel earned Axios HQ's 2026 Best-in-Class Award for All-staff Communications. See our other award winners: