dam Safety review 1

[ONENGINEER]

In the jurisdiction you practice, who does assign (contract)a review engineer for Dr of dam with significant to extreme failure consequences. Iambic interested in answers from practitioners from the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland and Japan, if possible.

 

[cvg]

Federal projects are inspected and reviewed by federal agencies, funded by congress. due to funding, or lack of it - there indeed can be a conflict of interest. for federally operated and maintained structures, generally safety is of high concern. however, for turn over projects (locally sponsored projects), funding for operation and maintenance is often lacking and may not be a priority for a sponsor. while periodic inspections are conducted by the government, it is not unusual that risk reduction is not always the highest priority for the owner. this was made obvious painfully obvious in the aftermath of Katrina. I will note that NRCS contracts a lot of engineering out to consultants. And most NRCS structures have local sponsors, so it is incumbent on the sponsor to do the O&M.

 

[ONENGINEER]

dgillette, you mentioned that complete reviews of design, performance, changes in the state of practice, etc. are done once every 6 years.
This is now in addition to the annual inspection. I do not know what do they call this complete review. One may call it dam safety review every six years. But from one of the comments I thought there are no periodical systematic reviews for dams except the annual inspections. Coming back to my original question, I guess this 6 yearly reviews are done by regulatory agency not by the owners.

I would appreciate further clarifications, if possible.

 

[dgillette]

Federal dam owners are generally self-regulated. In the case of Reclamation-owned dams, the 6-year comprehensive reviews are mostly done by Reclamation engineers, occasionally by consultants if work load requires it. And yes, it is in addition to the annual inspections. National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs have similar goals, although it is mostly done by consultant (or other government agency acting as consultant).

I don't think most privately owned dams get that kind of scrutiny, except hydropower dams licensed by FERC. State requirements vary quite a bit from state to state.