An Irving company has topped Fortune magazine's most admirable companies list in the engineering and construction category.
Fluor Corp. helps large Fortune 500 companies and big international companies build capital projects around the world. Spokesman Keith Stephens said the company has 43,000 employees around the world and executes about 1,000 projects per year on six different continents.
"We're doing everything from engineering and designing drug manufacturing facilities to roads here in DFW -- the [State Highway] 161 extension," he said.
John Simon Fluor, a Swiss immigrant, founded the company with $100. The humble family business has now grown into a company worth $24 billion.
Stephens said Fluor, who died in the 1940s, would have been a bit surprised at the company's acknowledgment by Fortune.
"It's a huge recognition," he said. "It's a peer recognition; it's how your competitors and peers feel about you."
Fluor Corp. moved its headquarters to Irving in 2006. It relocated about 50 employees from Southern California and hired 150 new employees, including Courtney Finn.
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Finn said she had relocated to North Texas from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
"I don't know if it wasn't for Katrina and Rita if I would be here," she said. "I'm actually so happy for that time of my life."
Fluor Corp. celebrates its 100th anniversary in April.
