A Dam Longer Than a Career

The full numbers

PHPA-I broke ground in 2008. It is now 2026. Eighteen years later, the project is still not commissioned. PHPA-II (1,020 MW) started in 2010 and was commissioned in December 2024 — 14 years. The 13th FYP commits Bhutan to ten additional large hydropower projects totaling 9,892 MW: Nyera Amari (404 MW), Kholongchu (600 MW), Dorjilung (1,125 MW), Bunakha (180 MW), Wangchhu (900 MW), Khomachhu (363 MW), Dangchhu (170 MW), Chamkharchhu-I (770 MW), Sankosh (2,585 MW), and Kuri-Gongri (2,800 MW). Plus a Gongri-Jericho pumped storage of 1,800 MW under DPR. Imagine this — the engineer A junior civil engineer joined the Punatsangchhu-I team in 2008. She was 24, fresh out of college — perhaps with a BEng from CST or an Indian engineering institute. The project was her first major assignment. Eighteen years later — today — she is 42. She has greyed at the temples. She has raised children who are now in college themselves. She has watched two changes of government, three RMA Governors, the entire COVID pandemic, the Lockdown of 2020-22, the global fuel-price spike, and the Royal launch of GMC. The project she joined as her first assignment is still not commissioned. If it commissions in 2028, she will be 44. If she retires at 60, she will have spent almost half of her entire working career on one incomplete dam. The career story she will tell her grandchildren is: “I worked on a project that took twenty years to build.” Now picture the next generation. Her daughter, fresh out of college today, joins the Dorjilung project in 2026. If Dorjilung takes the same time as PHPA-I (18 years), her daughter will complete one project — Dorjilung — in 2044, then have about 12 years before retirement. She may start one more project but won’t finish it. An entire two-generation engineering career in Bhutan, built on hydropower, will have produced just 1.5 completed dams between them. This is what mega-project delay costs the country. Not just money. Whole careers spent on incomplete monuments. Whole generations of engineers who never finished anything they could call theirs.

Where this came from

The delay sources are well documented — geological surprises, contractor disputes, cost overruns, payment delays, design changes, monsoon damage. None of them are unique to Bhutan. What is unique is the combination of them at this scale on a country with very small engineering and contracting depth.

Mega-projects globally have a ~30% cost-overrun rate and a 20% delay rate. Bhutan’s PHPA-I is at 100% delay and unknown cost overrun (the original projection was Nu 35 billion; current estimates are 3-4x that).

Why this matters now

Bhutan is about to commission ten more such projects under the same model — same financing partners, same construction firms, often the same engineering teams. The lessons of PHPA-I have not visibly been institutionalised. If the next generation of projects performs similarly, the 25 GW expansion plan through 2040 won’t come online until well past 2060. The engineers being trained at CST and PCE today will spend their entire careers on the projects already announced.

What it should be

• Completed by 2018 at latest if built at global pace.
• A 1,200 MW dam globally takes 6-10 years.
• The standard for Bhutan should be: PHPA-I completes within 12 years of FID; subsequent projects compress to 8 years by the time we’re on dam number five.

How others do it

• China’s Baihetan dam (16,000 MW — 13x the capacity of PHPA-I): construction 2012-2021, 9 years. The world’s second-largest hydro project, in 50% of Bhutan’s PHPA-I time.
• India’s Sardar Sarovar (1,450 MW + irrigation works): finally completed in 2017 after a 32-year political fight, but actual construction post-clearance was about 10 years.
• Brazil’s Belo Monte (11,000 MW, 9x PHPA-I): 8 years, despite massive environmental controversy.
• Laos’s Nam Theun 2 (1,070 MW, almost identical to PHPA-I in scale): built in 8 years.
• Pakistan’s Diamer-Bhasha (4,500 MW): under construction since 2019; expected 2028 commissioning — 9 years.

The question we should be sitting with

If we cannot finish Punatsangchhu-I in 18 years, what makes us confident the next 10 projects will land on time? What is the institutional reform that would let one engineer, in one career, complete more than one dam?