Tudor Engineering Company

Ralph A. Tudor founded the Tudor Engineering Company in 1950, with headquarters in San Francisco. The firm specialized in highway and bridge work, hydroelectric projects, transportation, and heavy civil infrastructure facilities, including a joint venture project which built the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.

From the description of Tudor Engineering Company records, 1933-2006. (University of California, Berkeley). WorldCat record id: 298763168

Biographical Information

The Tudor Engineering Company was founded in San Francisco in 1950 by the late Ralph A. Tudor, a West Point graduate and retired Colonel in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Tudor established a nationwide reputation for excellence following his involvement in the design and construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and other bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The firm's early assignments were the design and construction management of several long span bridges across the Colombia River between Washington and Oregon and across other major waterways in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to highway and bridge work, the firm developed expertise in the water resources field, including a major hydroelectric project in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California during the mid 1950s.

In the early 1960s, Tudor Engineering played a major role in the design and construction of the Tagus River Bridge project in Lisbon, Portugal. The firm also undertook a major hydroelectric project for the Merced Irrigation District in California. It designed and supervised construction of the Exchequer Dam. Located on the Merced River, it was the highest concrete-faced rock-filled dam in the United States at the time.

The early 1960s also saw the formation of the joint venture of Parsons-Brinkerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel (PBTB), which undertook the management of design and construction and activities for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. Tudor Engineering's role in the joint venture involved civil engineering design and construction activities, including aerial structures, several underground and above-ground transit stations, tunnels, bridges, and several train maintenance yards. The PBTB joint venture also undertook the design of the Caracas Metro system in Caracas, Venezuela, the first phase of which was completed in the 1970s.

By the completion of the BART and the Caracas systems, Tudor Engineering had developed special expertise in the design of modern rapid transit systems. Its next major transit assignment, conducted as a joint venture with Parsons Brinkerhoff (PBT), involved serving as the general engineering consultant for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) in Georgia. The PBT team began work on this project in the early 1970s.

In the mid 1970s, Tudor Engineering was one of the first consulting engineering firms to respond to the national energy shortage with innovative technology for retrofitting existing water resource facilities with small hydroelectric power plants. It pioneered this technology with methodology manuals for the Corps of Engineers, the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the Electric Power Research Institute. Besides developing new innovative technology, the firm has had the lead role in the planning, design, and construction management of more than 30 of these hydroelectric installations through the western United States.

In 1989 the Los Angeles office moved to Oakland, CA and Tudor Engineering Company merged with Kaiser Engineering in Oakland.

From the guide to the Tudor Engineering Company records, 1933-2006, (The Bancroft Library)