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Global Reach
With funding support from the U.S. Agency for international Development (USAID),
Palo Alto-based nonprofit GeoHazards International (GHI) is working with the
Delhi Public Works Department, Ministry of Home Affairs, and National Disaster
Management Agency to assess and retrofit seismically vulnerable structures, focusing initially on
five buildings: the Delhi Secretariat, Delhi police headquarters, Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital,
Ludlow Castle School and the Office of the Divisional Commissioner. It has brought facilities
managers, structural engineers and liquefaction experts from the Bay Area to Delhi to analyze
problems and has hosted Delhi Public Works engineers in Palo Alto for training. Once assessments
are completed, USAID provides funding for retrofitting by locals.
GHI has had an office in India since 2005, but first became involved in India in 2001, by invitation
from USAID after two major quakes in the 1990s. Since then, the group has specialized in bringing
the Bay Area’s experience and expertise in earthquake engineering to India. It raised funds from
two NGOs—Volunteers for India Development and Empowerment (VIDE) and The NGOs
Kobe (now Citizen’s Overseas Disaster Emergency or CODE)—to identify seismically unsafe
school buildings in Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Surat. GHI and an Indian disaster preparedness
organization, Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS), evaluated
153 schools and made recommendations to authorities for reducing risk. It has assessed earthquake
risk and proposed siting and construction solutions to local officials in Shimla City, a city of
700,000 in the northwestern Himalayas, built in hillsides with slopes as steep as 70–80 degrees.
San Francisco engineering firm URS Corp. is assisting the UK Department for International
Development with resource planning and integration of government services delivery
in Himachal Pradesh, where 91% of the population of 5.1 million lives in rural areas,
relying mainly on the state’s forests for their livelihood. In March 2005, URS signed a memorandum
of understanding with Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE) to pursue projects worldwide. The
two firms also partnered, along with W. G. Yates–Desbuild Joint Venture, to build the $81 million
U.S. Consulate complex in Mumbai, India.
Privately held Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco came out of the Dabhol power plant
litigation in 2005 (see Dabhol: The Mother of All Cases in the Legal Services section of this
chapter) with $145 million in compensation and a positive reputation. Bechtel continued
to advise the plant’s new operators after disposition of the case, and went on to bid in 2006
on five new power plant projects favored by the Central Government.
As early as 1990, Bechtel was working in India with metals and energy group Essar Global Ltd. on
two projects: a $120 million plant to manufacture iron pellets for export to the Middle East and
Southeast Asia, and a $700 million plant in eastern India to convert bauxite to alumina for export.
The firm has had an ongoing relationship with Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), involving two
large refinery projects in Jamnagar in 2000 and 2005. The first refinery began with a capacity of
450,000 barrels per day, accounting for downstream activity totaling $26 billion in 2001—onesixth
of India’s economy and one-third of its refining capacity that year. It eventually expanded
capacity to 650,000 barrels per day. Continued expansion will produce a refinery complex the
size of London that doubles capacity to 1.2 billion barrels per day, including clean fuels. The
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