Fluor Moving Officers, Making Some Jumpy
Fluor Corp., long a jewel in Orange County’s corporate crown, has some local economy watchers jumpy these days as it negotiates for a new (cheaper) lease on its Irvine digs.
The engineering and construction services company repeatedly has contended that it doesn’t plan on leaving the county and says it’s not playing the “I’m gonna take my ball and go” game that Taco Bell played when it wanted to cut a new deal on its Irvine headquarters.
But Fluor’s top operating officers have been relocating to various sites throughout the country, and some observers feel that the moves signal a lack of interest in keeping the corporate headquarters and its 2,300 employees a part of the Orange County economy.
Fluor says no--that the dispersal of executives is part of a corporate make-over that chairman and chief executive Les McCraw began two years ago. With top executives spread all over, the company says, it makes sense to keep the headquarters in Orange County rather than moving and losing much of the support staff in the process.
McCraw tops the list of those who have left the county. The South Carolinian came to Fluor in 1986 when the company acquired his previous employer, Daniel Construction Co. He never sold his home in Greenville, S.C., where Daniel--now Fluor Daniel--has most of its operations. He has also maintained a residence in Newport Beach for much of the past decade. He sold that in March, though, and now lives in a local hotel for the average of two weeks each month he spends in Irvine.
Fluor’s vice chairman, Hugh Coble, is selling his Santa Ana house but already has relocated to Fluor’s office in Dallas.
McCraw ordered the diaspora, reasoning that if it makes sense for him to be closer to the big Fluor Daniel operating unit and to the Wall Street and Washington communities Fluor depends on for a lot of its work, it also made sense for the person who runs Fluor’s petrochemical group to be in Texas with the petrochemical unit.
In recent months six of Fluor’s nine group presidents also have moved from Irvine to be closer to the markets and customers their units serve. Dallas and Houston have drawn one each, one is in London, one has moved to Singapore and two have joined McCraw in Greenville.
There’s logic here. What Fluor seems to be doing is catching up with the pack. The head of Rockwell International’s automation business, for instance, won’t be found at the corporate offices in Seal Beach. His office is at the division’s main operation in Milwaukee.
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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations, manufacturing and economic issues for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.
