John Howanitz

John Howanitz was named president of Bechtel’s Nuclear, Security & Environmental global business unit in September 2021.

He oversees a portfolio of U.S., allied government, and civil nuclear projects with missions that protect people and the planet and help build the path to net zero.

Key customers include the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and industry leaders in current and next-generation civil nuclear technologies. Project sites include a premier national laboratory, two chemical weapons destruction plants, three multi-billion-dollar construction projects, environmental cleanup projects in the U.S. and UK, and two nuclear defense plants. In civil nuclear, Bechtel is completing construction on the expansion of Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle Units 3 & 4 – the only nuclear plant expansion currently underway in the U.S. – and has joined forced with TerraPower and GE Hitachi on the Natrium advanced reactor demonstration project.

Previously, Howanitz was general manager of Bechtel’s business line that supports the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration. A veteran Bechtel project manager who joined the company in 1982, Howanitz has held leadership roles on a wide variety of projects including fossil power plants, commercial nuclear power plants, combined-cycle natural gas units, waste-to-energy facilities, and a NASA launch complex.

He has led teams building the $6.5 billion U.S. Uranium Processing Facility for highly enriched uranium in Tennessee and managing and operating the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site, and the Y-12 National Security Site in Tennessee.

Howanitz was elected a principal vice president of Bechtel in 2011 and senior vice president in 2014. He also serves as vice-chair of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Board of Managers.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Science degree from King’s College in Pennsylvania.