Civil engineering legacy leads to Richmond

Register News Editor Jodi Whitaker December 29, 2003 It’s not every day you hear someone talking about spending Sunday afternoons with family walking around a nuclear facility to see what has changed since the last visit. But that’s just what Kim Irwin, business manager for Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, did as a kid in Arkansas, where her father was working on a Bechtel Parsons site himself. “Every Sunday after church, we would walk around that site and see what changed every week,” Irwin said. Born in California, Irwin grew up mostly in Arkansas while her father worked on the nuclear site. And even though Irwin and her two brothers all wound up going through the civil engineering ranks — just like their father — Irwin herself started out on a different career path before choosing what she wanted to do in the future. At Brigham Young University in Utah, Irwin originally began studying home economics. “I spent about a year and a half as a home ec major, but I missed the math and science,” Irwin said. Then, after spending the summer between her freshman and sophomore college years, Irwin decided to take the engineering route instead. “I just love the building and the atmosphere of a construction site,” Irwin said. So every summer thereafter, Irwin would return home and work as a co-op student at the nuclear plant. By doing that, Irwin said she was able to build some equity in the Bechtel Parsons company — the company she continues to work for today. “I knew them because of my dad,” Irwin said. “Then somebody told me I had so much more experience than the normal college graduate to offer because I had talked about this stuff around the dinner table.” Not long after Irwin began working for Bechtel Parsons, her father retired. Today, right at 20 years later, Irwin has landed at a new site — the Blue Grass Army Depot site at which Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass is working on a project to demilitarize 523 tons of chemical weapons, which have been stored in Richmond for decades. Irwin came here from a previous job in South Carolina, and said the variety is one thing she especially likes about her job. “Variety was really part of what was so good about it,” Irwin said of her decision to stay with the company for so many years. “I feel like part of the family, because they look after their employees. If you invest the energy, they pay you back in loyalty the company has for you and bringing you opportunities to grow.” As business manager at Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass, Irwin has a number of duties, including overseeing prime contract administration, acquisitions, managing cost and schedule, human resources, information technology and automation planning. Irwin said moving to Richmond has been pleasant for her, her husband and four kids. “The south is very warm and welcoming, and here, people are so warm and friendly,” Irwin said of Richmond. “They make you feel like you’re part of the community immediately.” Irwin said she and the entire Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass staff are happy to be in Richmond, and as they continue their work at the Blue Grass Army Depot, they have one main goal in mind — safety. “Whether it’s here or any other project, our number one priority is safety,” Irwin said. “We know internally that is our number one goal and the primary responsibility in everything we do, whether we are in the office or the plant. We have one of the best safety records in the business, and we expect to maintain that.” Irwin said the team being formed to fulfill the task at hand in Richmond is a very experienced one. “We have put together a team that is unequaled in experience dealing with chemical weapons and huge projects,” she said. “It has the delicacies of dealing with chemical weapons and the grand scale of building a facility of this magnitude. We have the right individuals and the right corporate backing to accomplish this.” Jodi Whitaker can be reached at jwhitaker@richmondregister.com.

Story created Monday, December 29, 2003.