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The engineer in charge of helping build the largest hydropower project in the world, the Three Gorges Dam in China, will deliver a lecture at The University of Western Australia on 12 May.

Dr Cao Gaungjing will deliver the 26 ^th Dr George Hondros Memorial Lecture at 6pm (for 6.15pm) at the Auditorium Theatre at the University Club on the Crawley campus of UWA.

His talk will focus on ‘Decision-making, construction and operation of the Three Gorges Project' and detail some of the many technology breakthroughs associated with building the dam.

Building the Three Gorges Dam was a massive engineering undertaking.  The dam took 17 years to build and cost more than $25 billion (RMB 180 billion).  Its power generating capacity is 222,500 MW (about 10 times that Egypt's Aswan dam) and its construction involved relocating some 1.2 million people.

As well as delivering renewable energy, the dam assists with flood control and is designed to withstand a one-in-100-year flood.

Dr Cao is the chairman of the China Three Gorges Corporation.  His contributions to the world's hydropower industry include many innovative breakthroughs in the engineering and management aspects of the Three Gorges Project.

As China Three Gorges Project's director in charge of project management and later Executive Vice President, Dr Cao orchestrated the most complicated project construction in the world's hydropower history, which included massive concrete placement, close-off of the open diversion channel, reservoir impoundment and blasting of Phase-3 RCC dam.

The memorial lecture honours the late Dr George Hondros, a senior staff member of the Department of Civil Engineering (now the School of Civil and Resource Engineering) in the 1960s at UWA.

Please note:  this is not a public lecture and for media purposes only.

Media references

Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716