Jacobs Engineering Wins S. Carolina Contract

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. was awarded a contract from South Carolina’s Department of Transportation to design a bridge to replace two existing Cooper River bridges. The project by Jacobs’ Sverdrup Civil unit is estimated to cost $420 million, the Pasadena-based company said in a statement. Sverdrup will design a 3.1-mile-long highway bridge linking Charleston and Mount Pleasant, S.C., that will replace the John P. Grace Memorial and Silas N. Pearman spans that carry Route 17 over Charleston Harbor. The state is working with the Charleston Area Transportation Study to evaluate design options and will get public input on the project.

Jacobs has carved out a niche as a low-cost provider of construction and engineering for major projects and counts Exxon Corp. and pharmaceutical, paper and semiconductor companies as its major customers. Jacobs, which had revenue of $2.9 billion in fiscal 1999, operates in southern Europe as well as North and South America, Britain and India. Jacobs, whose shares have fallen 19% in the last year, fell 75 cents to close at $30.19 on the NYSE.