Spotlight |
Engineering booms as demand for dams surges
Del Shannon explores the unprecedented growth of the dams and reservoirs market, which has averaged 12% annual expansion for two decades. With rising challenges such as water scarcity, aging infrastructure, and increased renewable energy demand, engineers face a surge in complex dam projects – while struggling to fill key expertise gaps
Author details
Del Shannon, PE, Civil Engineer 833 Ithaca Drive, Boulder, CO 80305 Tel: +1 303-990-7232
dashannon@hotmail.com
THE DAMS MARKET IS busy. Very, very busy. Those of us working in this market are not surprised; the only surprise is just how busy we’ve been…and expect to be for many decades. For the last 20 years the dams and reservoirs market has averaged 12% year over year growth. In other words, beginning around 2004 this market has doubled every six years. Monitoring and tracking the dams market was first
Below: Figure 1 – Dam & reservoir engineering company revenues (1977 to 2023)
$4,000 $3,500 $3,000 $2,500 $2,000 $1,500 $1,000 $500 $0
initiated by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in 1977 and was simply reported as a contributor to the entire US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If 10% of this GDP is assumed to be contributed by engineering firms, a picture of the engineering effort for dams and reservoir projects begins to emerge. The BEA stopped tracking this data in 1997, but quite fortuitously, the Engineering News Record (ENR) began publishing its Sourcebooks in 1998, including a category for dams and reservoirs. The ENR data is very straightforward. Each year, US based engineering firms report their total revenues in six major markets – General Building, Transportation, Oil and Gas, Power, Environmental, and Manufacturing – and 67 submarkets within these broad categories. For example, the dams and reservoirs market is reported as a submarket of the Environmental category. When the revenues of the top firms working in this market are combined and tracked annually, long-term engineering revenue trends come even more into focus. Combining the BEA and ENR data paints a fairly complete picture of US based engineering firms working on dams and reservoir projects over the last 47 years, which is shown in Figure 1. The solid line represents actual engineering annual revenue data as reported by the BEA and ENR.
AECOM is the one of the engineering firms working
extensively in this market and has seen its dams and reservoirs revenues increase from $13.7 million in 1998 to $666.3 million in 2023, which is the largest annual revenues of any firm working in this market. This translates to an average annual increase of over 11%. Dennis Hogan is AECOM’s global lead for dams and hydropower and believes this growth is due to several factors. “We’re seeing significant growth across all regions as well as globally. This is because of a renewed focus on infrastructure and climate resilience, and we’re seeing this on all continents,” said Hogan. “Dam owners are prioritizing critical infrastructure as they gain a better understanding of their risk and exposure. The sheer number, size, and complexity of these projects will be a challenge to study, design, and construct.”
Other consulting engineering firms are seeing
similar impressive growth. Schnabel Engineering is a specialized engineering firm focused primarily on geotechnical, dam and tunnel services. It also is one of the few US engineering firms with a business unit dedicated solely to the dams market. Since it was established with eight professionals in 1994, this group has grown to 215 professionals and has seen its annual revenues swell from $1 million during its first year to over $58 million in 2023. Most impressively, the dams group now accounts for about half of the overall revenues of the company.
12% average annual growth (2004 to present)
Michael Canino is the business unit president for Schnabel’s Dam and Levee Engineering Services (Strategy and Execution) and says he’s been fortunate to work within this group. “There is an abundance of new and existing dam and levee opportunities, particularly in the water supply, power generation, and flood control areas,” said Canino. “The adoption of risk- informed decision-making approaches over the last few decades has positively transformed the way many US federal agencies approach engineering analyses and design. And many states are now beginning to adopt similar approaches.” Canino shares the concern of many others related
to staffing. “Overall, the biggest challenge we’re seeing is finding enough experienced dam engineers and engineering geologists to outpace the rapid rate of retirements.”
As with the engineering revenues for dams and 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030
reservoirs, a dramatic increase in professional associations focused on dams and dam safety has also been occurring. The United States Society on Dams (USSD), the US representative of the International Commission on
12 | November 2024 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
$millions
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