The China Engineering and Consulting Association recently released the "Announcement on the Winners of the 2025 National Excellent Engineering Survey and Design Award", and Guangzhou Beijiang River Water Diversion Works (the Part of Huadu Water Plant and Water Distribution Pipeline Project) won the first prize of the National Excellent Engineering and Design Award with its forward-looking design concept and excellent engineering practice, making it the only water plant project in the first prize list of this year.

The National Excellent Engineering and Design Award is the highest national award in the national engineering and design industry organized and selected by the China Engineering and Consulting Association. Huadu Water Plant's winning of this award is an eloquent testimony to its technological advance, innovation, and comprehensive benefits in the field of urban water utilities.

As a key water source project of strategic importance in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Huadu Water Plant project has on its shoulder an important mission since the beginning of its planning. With a total investment of about 1.6 billion yuan, a designed capacity of 480,000 cubic meters per day for the first phase, and a land occupation of 67 acres, the project not only solves the water supply gap in the northern part of Guangzhou and optimizes the city's water supply layout, but also undertakes the important role of enhancing the safety and resilience of water supply and improving the regional water ecological environment.

The concept of "smart innovation, stability and efficiency, green ecology, low-carbon, and environmental protection" has been followed throughout the whole design and construction process of Huadu Water Plant. In terms of smart innovation, Huadu Water Plant deeply integrates BIM technology to build a BIM+GIS collaborative management platform that realizes intelligent management of the whole process of design, construction, and procurement. Based on the full-process BIM digital model, process AI model and intelligent decision-making large model are trained and developed to make the water plant a smart one.

In order to ensure the stability and efficiency of water supply, Huadu Water Plant adopts the design of multiple sets of independent and interconnected production lines, and builds a digital production scheduling platform to achieve direct remote dispatch and control of subordinate water plants and pressurization stations, realizing the integrated management of "sources, plant, network and stations"; and a dual water source layout consisting of the Beijiang River main water source and the Furongzhang Reservoir emergency backup water source is to be established, which, once completed, the Furongzhang Reservoir will have the capacity to meet the short-term water supply needs of Huadu District in extreme situations such as sudden emergencies affecting the Beijiang River water source.

In implementing the concept of green ecology and low-carbon environmental protection, Huadu Water Plant uses vegetation and tree species commonly found in Lingnan Region to cover squares, roads, rooftops and courtyards, creating a multi-level green ecological space; the clear-water reservoir adopts an underground design, and an ecological park is built on the top to demonstrate a "green water plant"; in process layout, the project makes full use of the original topography and landforms that are high in the north and low in the south, which saves 60% energy compared with other water plants of the same type; and two separate sets of purification systems for production and domestic wastewater are set up, where the treated wastewater is used for the green landscape of the plant, helping to achieve "0" wastewater discharge in the factory area.

Huadu Water Plant breaks through the functional boundaries of traditional water plants and creates a diversified and integrated platform of "water production, teaching, scientific research, display and innovation". The intelligent unmanned laboratory, immersive water culture exhibition hall, and professional conference and training center in the Plant not only provide a practice base for the integration of industry, education and research in the field of water affairs, but also allow the public to have first-hand experience with water culture and water technology, so as to realize the extension of social benefits.

"The biggest gain in the construction of Huadu Water Plant is the creation of a new quality productivity scenario that have at its core such elements of 'technology-drive, digital intelligence empowerment, model innovation, green and low-carbon and talent support'." According to a relevant person in charge of the project, they will in the future continue to deepen water technology innovation in order to contribute more to regional water supply security and to the high-quality development of the water industry.