Len McDonald

Len worked continuously on dam design and dam safety evaluation for thirty eight years until his retirement in 2014. He has had a long association with ANCOLD from 1979 onwards, having attended thirty three ANCOLD conferences on dams. Len was the secretary of ANCOLD for three years from 1992 to 1994 and assistant secretary for six years from 1998 to 2003.

Len has served on a number of working groups preparing ANCOLD guidelines, most notably the guidelines on risk assessment. From 1987 to 1993 he was a member of the group which produced the 1994 Guidelines on Risk Assessment. He was then appointed the convenor of the second ANCOLD working group on risk assessment from 1995 to 2003. That group’s work culminated in publication of the new ANCOLD Guidelines on Risk Assessment in October 2003.

He also represented ANCOLD on a number of ICOLD technical committees, his main involvement being with the ICOLD Committee on Dam Safety from 1998 to 2003 and on which he served as acting chairman for 2002 and 2003. During that time Len was the lead author for the ICOLD Bulletin No. 130 Risk Assessment in Dam Safety Management – A Reconnaisance of Benefits, Methods and Current Applications published in 2005.

Len was chairman of the NSW Dams Safety Committee from 1997 to 2009 where he acquired an international reputation for dam safety risk management in the regulatory context. He was an invited speaker for the Workshop on Tolerable Risk held by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Bureau of Reclamation and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Alexandria, Virginia in March 2008.

Len has been recognised for his work in dam safety and risk assessment, having been made honorary life member of ANCOLD in 2003 and named as one of the one hundred most influential engineers by Engineers Australia in 2006.