Bechtel Drives a Highway Through the Heart of Transylvania

The road to Europe's largest highway project winds through villages where one sees old women in black head scarves and the occasional horse-drawn cart. Then, on a seemingly deserted plateau, comes a sign with a triangular logo: Transylvania Motorway. Turn left, and suddenly you're in the middle of a small city, with stacks of temporary housing containers, a small mountain of gravel, and a parking lot full of identical Nissan four-wheel-drive pickup trucks.

That's the first incongruous thing in this region that many people associate—inaccurately—with dark castles, primitive forests, and vampires. The second incongruity is Michael John Mix, a barrel-chested American in cowboy boots with a picture on the wall of his office showing himself holding a massive catfish. What's a guy with a Kansas twang doing in the middle of Transylvania? "I like building stuff, you know," Mix says in a deep voice that many a country-and-western singer might envy.

New Infrastructure Attracts Investment
He could hardly have found a better way to do what he likes. Mix is project director for the Bechtel Group in Romania, overseeing construction of a $3.2 billion, 258-mile divided highway that will more than halve the driving time to Western Europe. The Autostrada Transilvania, as it's known in Romanian, is a dramatic example of the kind of emerging market infrastructure projects that are fueling sales for companies such as San Francisco-based Bechtel, Germany's Hochtief (HOTG.DE), and Norway's Aker Kvaerner (AKVER.F).

Romania demonstrates why many emerging countries desperately need such projects if they are to continue their rapid growth. The Romanian economy grew more than 6% in 2007, economists estimate, but the nation could develop even faster if travel and transport were easier. With 22 million people living in a territory the size of Oregon, Romania has fewer than 100 miles of high-speed highway, by some estimates. Airports and railways also need upgrading.