The consortium that won the
1931 contract to build
Hoover Dam,
it was composed of
Although
Wilbur Bechtel was president of the consortium, and
Harry Morrison
of Morrison-Knudsun suggested the name, the biggest force behind the formation
of Six Companies appears to have been engineer
Frank Crowe, the man who
was eventually made the project's chief of construction. Crowe had
been working for 20 years in the US
Bureau of Reclamation and was hot
to build a dam on the lower Colorado. When the Bureau decided to
have a private company build the dam, it was Crowe who went to Morrison,
who assembled the team. It was Crowe who calculated the $48.9 million
bid that won the contract (the largest government contract awarded up to that time), which just happened to be almost exactly the
same amount that the Bureau of Reclamation had estimated the project would
cost.
Six Companies wanted to make a profit, and Crowe had to finish the project under budget. They didn't dare cut corners where materials were concerned, but as this was the middle of
the Great Depression, with millions out of work, they could cut corners with
labor, especially workers' safety. For every man who night have complained about conditions, there were six men hungry to replace him.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/hoover/peopleevents/pandeAMEX88.html
http://www.1st100.com/part1/crowe.html
http://www.enr.com/new/A0510.asp