R. Michael Beathard earned his B.S. in Geology from SES in 1973 and an M.S. in Geology from Colorado State University in 1976. Michael retired in 2017 from a 41-year career, 39 of them with Bechtel Corporation in Houston and San Francisco. For the 14-year period from 1993 to 2006, Michael was the Chief (manager) of Bechtel’s Geotechnical & Hydraulic Engineering Services in Bechtel’s Houston office. G&HES is Bechtel’s “Geotech Group”, responsible for a wide range of specialty engineering services in the areas of geotechnical engineering, engineering geology, hydrology, hydraulic engineering, seismology, geophysics and remote sensing/GIS. In later years he was an engineering manager principally involved with the marine facilities on LNG projects. Michael notes, however, that he never really left his geological roots and continued to provide geological and geotechnical advice to the company until his retirement.
Contact: mbeathard@earthlink.net
"My Ohio State experience taught me to really think. I learned to look at the big picture while appreciating the fact that the big picture is always composed of myriad details."
Where has your degree taken you?
My geology degree has literally taken me around the world. After graduate school, I started off as a well-site geologist and mudlogger on Rocky Mountain oil and gas drilling sites based in Denver. After a year I hired on with a private company in Las Vegas and worked for the USGS at the Nevada Test Site for two years. We were investigating candidate locations and geology for possible nuclear waste disposal. These were precursor studies that eventually led to the selection of Yucca Mountain as the primary site for investigation and characterization for a national high-level waste repository. I didn’t participate in any Yucca Mountain studies because my work on waste disposal landed me a dream job with Bechtel, one of the world’s largest, privately held engineering and construction companies.
From 1978 to 2017, Bechtel was my professional home. I spent the first 15 years based in San Francisco and the remainder of my career in Houston. My first job was as an engineering geologist on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a low-level radwaste project sited 2,150 feet below ground in bedded Permian salt near Carlsbad, New Mexico. One of the more challenging assignments I had was mapping the geology and installing geomechanical instrumentation inside three of the access shafts while perched on a platform suspended by cables. That may not sound very exciting until you realize it’s very much like being a window-washer on the outside of a 2,000-foot-tall building.
My Ohio State degree allowed me to take on an impressive number of Bechtel project assignments over the decades. I worked on a hydrogeologic investigation at a nuclear power plant in Spain. I was lowered into over 300 drilled foundations for mapping and construction inspection at a power plant in Montana. I led a study on the feasibility of siting nuclear power plants in underground caverns. While working on geotechnical site investigations for a tunnel and power plant in Washington State, I witnessed the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens from one of the last aircraft allowed to fly near the volcano. I directed grouting activities on a large dam in southern Alaska and watched the 1989 eruption of Redoubt Volcano in the distance. I mapped the geology and identified geohazards for a major motorway project in Turkey. With my experience in waste disposal, I consulted on site selection and site characterization for a potential underground low-level nuclear repository in the former Yugoslavia.
I was involved with four liquefied natural gas projects in Australia over the years. The first was near the northern city of Darwin where I led a small team in investigating the geology and soils of the site so that design work could begin in Houston. The next LNG project was near Gladstone in Queensland. I managed a large group of Bechtel specialists and drilling and geophysical subcontractors to assemble the geotechnical data required to design the large project. The third trip to Australia was a site visit and client meetings for a large LNG project located on the northern coast of the state of Western Australia. My last project was yet another LNG plant in Western Australia. This time I was the manager for the engineering design of the marine facilities, a job I did several times for other projects and an indication of how a degree in geology often opens doors for professional growth in other areas.
One of the most memorable projects in my career happened just recently. My wife Margarita and I moved to Ankara, Turkey in support of a large pipeline project. For almost a year I led the geotechnical team as we explored the 1,800 kilometer route across Turkey from Georgia west to the border with Greece.
How do you feel your experience, specifically as an SES/geology student at OSU, prepared you for your career or life in general?
My Ohio State experience taught me to really think. I learned to look at the big picture while appreciating the fact that the big picture is always composed of myriad details. Although much of my career has been in engineering management, I have consistently found that my sense for geology and geomorphology, learned well at OSU, gave me certain advantages in an engineering and construction company. One big example: a seasoned geologist, with just rudimentary tools such as a topo map or a Google Earth image, can participate in a site visit for a prospective project and give the civil engineer and construction manager a great deal of information. On a coastal site, the geologist can describe the possible need for shore or harbor protection; tell from tide lines the minimum elevation that might be required to avoid wave erosion; remind the engineer that a site might need a tsunami evaluation; give an idea from the coastal geomorphology if near-shore dredging might be required; and assess from the general geology and geomorphology if deep foundations such as piles or shallow foundations like concrete mats will dominate the construction budget. Similarly in interior project sites geology and geomorphology will tell you much with just a good look. Things like river morphology and terraces, rock outcrops or the lack of them, or obviously unstable slopes mean more to a trained geologist than to anyone else on the project team. I found my basic training in geology made me very valuable on preliminary site visits and bid estimates.
What is your favorite memory as a student?
Definitely my summer in Ephraim, Utah. OSU field camp was the most fun and exciting time I had as a geology student.
What advice do you have for current and future students?
Geology is one of those professions where job opportunities are cyclic. I sold insurance for two years after my OSU graduation before moving on to grad school and before I finally landed a geology job. If you really love geology, follow your heart and don’t worry so much about the salary. It’s so much better to go to work each day doing a job you like than work in a high-stress environment for better pay. And be flexible; you never know where a geology degree will lead you.
One thing about a career in geology is you usually work yourself out of a job. That means you get to visit any number of job sites and interesting places during the course of a career. With a global company like Bechtel, I managed to work in or visit a dozen different countries. The list includes Australia, Turkey, Greece, Peru, Spain, Angola, England, Russia, Trinidad, Indonesia (Java), the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia and Croatia) and Canada.