Odebrecht Engineering & Construction (OEC) attended the Third International Dam World Conference, an event held in Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná between September 17 and 21. OEC engineering manager, Fernando Resende, was a member of the Scientific Committee and chaired the table on roller-compacted concrete. Resende also presented two projects for technologies that break construction paradigms and shorten deadlines:

1. Twenty Years of the Itá method to stabilize concrete face rockfill dams.
2. Current Brazilian practices for planning and to construct large spillways.

Another OEC member also participated at the event: engineer Antonio Sergio Barbin presented the technical work of steel fiber-reinforced concrete for the log overflow system at the Santo Antonio hydroelectric power plant (HPP).

In addition to the talks, the conference held technical visits to nearby dams. Contract manager, Luis Fernando Rahuan, at the Baixo Iguaçu hydroelectric power plant, received visitors from Brazil, Germany, USA, Spain, Turkey and Bolivia. Engineer, José Ivo Fernandes, who works in dam security in the northeast of Brazil, was surprised by the construction. “My daughter, a civil engineering undergraduate student, and I, were rewarded with knowledge about the Baixo Iguaçu HPP, from basic project information to further details about the civil work on the powerhouse and spillway,” commented Fernandes.

Organizations affiliated to the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), the National Civil Engineering Laboratory of Portugal (LNEC), the Brazilian Institute of Concrete (IBRACOM), the Portuguese National Committee on Large Dams (CNPGB) and the Brazilian Committee on Dams (CBDB) organized the Third Dam World Conference. The conference was held alongside the 60th Brazilian Congress on Concrete, organized annually by IBRACON. The two events mobilized more than 1,300 participants, with the majority being engineers or engineering students.