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STEVEN D. BRIDGES Engineering Fellow (Retired) |
Steve Bridges is a 1974 graduate of The University of Missouri – Rolla with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. Immediately after graduation, Steve started his career with Phillips Petroleum at the Fairfax Refinery in Kansas City, KS. Steve’s work with Phillips would take him from K.C. to Bartlesville, OK, to Sweeny, TX, and back to Bartlesville before moving to Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPChem) in 2000. Steve’s home offices with CPChem were in Bartlesville and Houston, and lastly back to Kansas City (as fate would have it) before retiring from CPChem late in 2020. Steve’s licensing and project team assignments took him to overseas locations in Argentina, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China along the way.
Steve’s work over his 46+ year career involved both individual contributor and team assignments, and supervisory / managerial roles, across a full range of responsibilities. Steve was fortunate to be assigned to work on two first-of-a-kind process scaleups and developments, plant designs, and startups. First for Phillips with their Steam Active Reforming (STAR) process and second for Phillips / CPChem with the CPChem Selective 1-Hexene Technology that was built and commercialized as part of a facility in Mesaieed, Qatar. Chemical Engineering Magazine honored CPChem for their Selective 1-Hexene Technology with the 2005 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award given to “recognize most noteworthy chemical engineering technology commercialized in the world during the two years prior to the award year”.
More recently Steve has served as the Process Design Manager for CPChem’s joint venture in Jubail, Saudi Arabia; provided process engineering support for CPChem’s complex in Old Ocean, TX, and was CPChem’s lead process engineer for another CPChem’s project.
Early in his Phillips career, Steve followed Academy founding member R. W. “Hank” Hankinson serving as Phillips’ representative to UMR’s Corporate Development Council, and in the mid-2000’s with CPChem attended several yearly Chemical Engineering Advisory Committee meetings. Steve also worked Career Fairs and recruited ChE’s for Phillips in the 80’s.
2021 finds Steve and wife April learning retirement, perhaps quite well, in Waterloo, IA. Steve and April are blessed with two sons, both engineers and both Rolla graduates with Jason (M.S. EE) – Munich, DE, and Jonathan (M.S. ME) – Waterloo, IA.