China Yangtze Three Gorges Project (TGP), as one of the biggest hydropower-complex project in the world, ranks as the key project for improvement and development of Yangtze River. The dam is located in the areas of Xilingxia gorge, one of the three gorges of the river, which will control a drainage area of 1 million square km, with an average annual runoff of 451 billion cubic meters. The open valley at the dam site, with hard and complete granite as the bedrock, has provided the favorable topographical and geological conditions for dam construction.

TGP is a multi-objective development project with great benefits in flood control, power generation, and navigation and so on. The project consists of river dam, spillway structures, powerhouse, buildings for navigation, etc, and organized by the scheme officially briefed as "developed in one scale, completed in one time, water-storage by stages, and continuous migration". The dam is concrete gravity dam, with the spillway in the middle, and the power house and non-overflow section at both sides. The axial length of the dam is 2309.47 m, the crest height is 185m, and the maximum height of the dam is 181m. With a normal storage level at 175m, the total capacity of the reservoir reaches 39.3 billion cubic meters, of which the effective flood control capacity reaches 22.15 billion cubic meters.

The total period of TGP construction is 17 years, which can be divided into three phases. Phase I (1993~1997) was designed mainly to do advance work for project construction and excavation of diversion channel with the river close-off as the milestone. Phase II (1998-2003) was mainly designed for construction of spillway and left-bank power house and the ship lock, with the completion of initial water storage, commercial operation of first batch of generators and ship lock open to navigation as several significant milestones of this phase. Phase III (2004-2009) has the main task of construction of right-bank dam and powerhouse, which is symbolized as the commercial operation of all the generator units and completion of the project.

The official approved static budget for preliminary design of TGP (based on the price at the end of May 1993 without considering the factors of price rises and loan interest in the construction period) is RMB 90.09 billion yuan, of which RMB 50.09 billion yuan is for the project construction, and the other RMB 40 billion yuan for the reservoir and migrants resettlement. Once the price rises and loan interests occurred in the long construction period and other such factors are considered, the dynamic budget will reach RMB 203.9 billion yuan.

The funds for the project comes from several sources such as state investment named Three Gorges Fund, power generation income of Gezhouba and Three Gorges power plant, loans from the state development bank and commercial banks, issuance of bonds and stocks, export credit and so on. The funds is well in place in the construction period.

By the end of August 2004, a total of RMB 111.6 billion the fulfilled total has been investment invested since the project started is RMB 106.653 billion yuan, and the static investment is RMB 72 73.2 billion yuan, of which 38.95 40.4 billion yuan for the project and 3 3.05 2.8 billion yuan for the reservoir and compensation to reservoir impoundment migrants. Considering for the match between the amount of works and the investment, the percentage in completed physical work quantity is larger than that of the investment, which indicates that the budge is well under s control operates well control. Based on the current conditions, it's expected to keep the total investment below an be managed below RMB 180 billion yuan when at the project is completed.

For over ten years as the legal person responsible for the project, China Yangtze Three Gorges Development Corporation (CTGPC) persists on organizing the project construction according to market economic principles, and executes a project construction management system with legal person responsibility as the core, including bidding for contractors, management by contracts, constructing with supervision. In the project construction, the quality is put at the first place, and management creation is emphasized. In order to improve the quality management level, a QA system is established with multi-level control and whole-process supervision. And considering TGP's features of large scale and great number of components, the progress control system is established based on the project management principles and with computer information system as supplementary. And the so called "static control and dynamic management" budget system and the contracts based investment control system are set up, which forms double restricts for the investment. With all these methods, the factual construction progress satisfies the complete arrangement of the project, and project quality conforms with the design, and investment is controlled within the budget approved by the state.

(China.rog.cn, China Daily, September 28, 2007)