Note: The
exhibit celebrating "The Michael Baker, Jr., Story"
closed at yearend 2008. Watch for details of our new 2009
exhibit, to open in March, celebrating the rich heritage of
our local farmscapes.
The Michael
Baker, Jr. Story
The compelling
saga of Beaver Area entrepreneur Michael Baker, Jr. and the
spectacular growth of the worldwide civil engineering and
energy firm he founded, the Michael Baker Corporation.
In April 1940, at
age 28, Michael Baker, Jr., officially opened his surveying
and engineering business in the Penn-Beaver Hotel (Room 122)
in Rochester, PA. The business grew from a single $25 lot
survey to an eight-man operation grossing $15,000 in its first
year.
Always a visionary,
Mike traveled the globe early in his career in search of his
"favorite project andthe next project." Through
the Far East, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America,
he logged millions of travel miles.
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|
Baker-designed
$7.7 billion Trans-Alaska Pipeline |
Engineering Design
In 1951, the firm was named consulting
engineer and construction administrator for Saudi Arabia.
This entailed design of harbor facilities, customs buildings,
major highway systems, airports, water supply and electrical
systems, a private hospital for the royal family, a $30 million
air base and additions to the royal palaces.
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| West Virginia's New River
Gorge Bridge -- the longest single arch steel bridge in
the world |
Considered to be
one of the great engineering and construction feats in recent
history, the Trans- Alaska Pipeline was a crowning achievement
for Baker during the late 1960s and into 1977, when the project
became operational. Upon completion, the $7.7 billion project
was the largest privately funded venture in history. The 48-inch
oil pipeline was designed to bring two million barrels of
crude from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.
The Baker-designed
New River Gorge Bridge, in Fayetteville, WV, is an engineering
marvel stretching 3,030 feet from one end to the other. With
a main arch span of 1,700 feet, it is the longest single arch
steel bridge in the world, and at 876 feet above the gorge,
it is the second highest bridge in the U.S.
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| Program management for U.S.
Department of Homeland Security |
Public Works/Government
Projects
Baker's work for
the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program is
helps keep our borders safe. What started as a data collection
and mapping task for 400 border air, land, and sea points-of-entry
has evolved into Baker as an integral, overall program manager.
Baker's services
on behalf of the Department of Defense Dependents Schools
began in 1988. Baker has helped detect and manage asbestos
abatement at 1,000 facilities worldwide. Today, Baker serves
the DoD Education Activity with critical planning, design,
environmental and program management services.
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| FEMA mapping information
platform overlaid with sophisticated, geo-spatially linked
elevation, political, transportation, hydrology and orthophoto
data. |
The American Consulting
Engineers Council honored Baker with its 1992 Grand Conceptor
Award for the design of Vine Street Expressway in Philadelphia.
This $225 million, seven-year effort provided much needed
relief for one of Pennsylvania's most congested highway corridors.
Baker was one of the very first engineering companies to utilize computer technology for engineering purposes. Its first computer had less computing power than most handheld calculators of the 1980s.
The Federal Emergency
Management Agency has been a client for more than 30 years.
In 2004, Baker embarked on its most challenging FEMA project
yet --the $750 million modernization of the entire flood mapping
system as FEMA's National Service Provider.
For more information
about today's Michael Baker Corporation, visit its website
at www.mbakercorp.com.
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