On December 1, 2025, the public announcement of the evaluation results took a crucial step towards realizing a dream that Sichuan had been eagerly anticipating for decades. The Yinda Jimin Project, a super water conservancy project with a total investment of 57.5 billion yuan and a concern for the future of tens of millions of people, has finally welcomed a team to depict its "bones" and "soul". With the selection of the winning bidder for survey and design, the paper blueprint is about to turn into detailed exploration data and construction drawings. A modern legend of crossing mountains and adjusting rivers has officially entered the countdown.

According to the announcement, the competition for the survey and design section of the Da Ji Min Project is extremely fierce, attracting 13 top domestic water conservancy design units including the Yellow River Design Institute and the Northeast Institute of China Water Resources to participate in the competition. In the end, a consortium led by Sichuan Shuifa Survey, Design and Research Co., Ltd., in collaboration with Yangtze River Survey, Planning, Design and Research Co., Ltd. and Zhongshui North Survey, Design and Research Co., Ltd., emerged as the first candidate for the bid, with a bid price of approximately 2.13 billion yuan. This team, which brings together local main forces and top central enterprises under its jurisdiction, will shoulder the core responsibility of survey and design for the entire project. Anhui Provincial Water Resources and Hydropower Survey and Design Institute Co., Ltd. and Yunnan Provincial Water Resources and Hydropower Survey and Design Institute Co., Ltd. ranked second and third respectively, demonstrating the national influence of the project.

Project No.1 has entered the fast lane

The idea of introducing the Da Ji Min Project can be traced back to the 1950s. After decades of repeated argumentation and preparation, its progress accelerated after 2021 and was identified by the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee and Government as the "Number One Project" that concerns the overall development. In 2025, the project will reach a decisive milestone: on October 31st, the feasibility study report of the project was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission; On November 7th, the mobilization meeting for engineering construction was held in Tianquan County, Ya'an City; Until December 1st, the results of the core survey and design evaluation will be publicly announced. This clear timeline marks the transition of the project from a long-term vision to a substantive pre construction stage. The survey and design work for this tender has a maximum bid price of 2.15854 trillion yuan, which is the first and key to the total investment of 575.1883 billion yuan project. The funds come from central, provincial, local supporting facilities and self raised by the project owner.

Tackling world-class challenges

The core task of the Da Ji Min Project is to extract water from the reservoir area of the Luding Power Station on the Dadu River and supply it to the Chengdu Plain through a water supply network with a total length of about 260.9 kilometers. The main solution is to provide water for urban and rural living and industrial use, while also considering agricultural irrigation. Its significance is profound: firstly, the annual water intake of the project is 1.523 billion cubic meters, covering 43 counties (cities, districts) in 8 cities including Chengdu and Deyang, benefiting over 34 million people. When completed, it will form a dual water source and dual channel water supply pattern with Dujiangyan Irrigation Project, fundamentally changing the history of Chengdu Plain relying on a single water source for a long time. Secondly, it will provide guarantees for the addition of 1.79 million acres and the improvement of 5.91 million acres of irrigated area, effectively supporting the construction of a higher-level "Tianfu Granary" in the new era.

However, achieving this vision requires tackling a series of world-class technological challenges. The project requires crossing the Erlang Mountain with a maximum burial depth of 2040 meters and constructing the Lianhua Mountain Tunnel with a total length of approximately 39.5 kilometers. It faces challenges such as deep buried long tunnels and high flow energy dissipation under complex geological conditions. The total length of the tunnel is 151 kilometers, accounting for over 58%. The construction process will integrate cutting-edge technologies such as TBM excavation and digital twin, becoming a concentrated demonstration of China's smart water conservancy construction level. Keywords: engineering construction, engineering construction news

With the final determination of the survey and design team, the construction curtain of the Yinda Jimin Project is slowly unfolding. The struggle for the next 8 years is not only to open up a water supply channel, but also to inject a continuous stream of life and development momentum into the future development of Sichuan Jian Dao website infrastructure engineering column editor/Yang Beihua