NEOM Trojena £3.7bn lake and dam cancellation: design and risk lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
A $4.7bn (£3.7bn) contract with WeBuild to construct an artificial lake at Trojena, part of Saudi Arabia’s NEOM winter sports resort, has been cancelled with around 30% of the works already completed. The scheme included a major dam and high-altitude lake intended as the centrepiece of a year-round ski and leisure development in the desert mountains. The termination raises immediate questions over sunk costs, re-purposing of partially built hydraulic structures and long-term water resource planning for large-scale tourism projects in arid regions.
Technical Brief
- Termination at ~30% completion leaves partially built dam and lake basin requiring interim hydraulic stability checks.
- Failure mechanism focus shifts from overtopping/structural breach risk to erosion, seepage and slope instability in an unfilled basin.
- Monitoring should prioritise piezometers, joint meters and slope inclinometers to track seasonal pore pressures in the steep desert topography.
- Remediation options include controlled backfilling of excavation, permanent drainage paths and armouring of exposed abutments and spillway inlets.
- Any residual dam structure will need updated hazard classification and emergency planning based on reduced or zero impoundment scenarios.
- Environmental investigation must address altered runoff patterns, sediment mobilisation and potential downstream flash-flood routing from unfinished works.
- For similar arid-region resort dams, early-stage de-risking now clearly includes exit strategies and reversible hydraulic layouts.
Our Take
Webuild’s role on long-duration, complex schemes like the Brenner Base Tunnel and Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop in our database suggests it will try to redeploy specialist teams and plant from Saudi Arabia rather than unwind that capability, which may cushion the impact of the cancellation on its tunnelling and heavy civils portfolio.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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