Kwan Yee Lo Full Interview

Geotechnical engineer Kwan Yee Lo decided upon graduation in 1957 to do graduate research in soil mechanics at Imperial College London. His Masters of Science work was supervised by Professor Skempton, with Dr. Robert Gibson and visiting Professor Davis from the University of Sydney contributing significantly. In October 1959, he started at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, where he essentially was an assistant to Dr. Bjerrum there. He was encouraged by Cam Kenny, later Chair of the University of Toronto Civil Engineering Department, to emigrate to Canada, where he started working for Acres in 1961. His work there included design of the inlet and outlet structures of the Winnipeg Floodway. He then moved to the Ontario Department of Highways, where he tested a full-scale embankment to failure. He joined the University of Laval in 1965 and subsequently, in 1970, Western, where he worked in the areas of tunnels in soil and rock. His many projects included investigating distress at the Thorold Tunnel below the Welland Canal, which led to major changes in the approach to tunnel design in rock. He designed the intake and discharge tunnels at the Darlington Nuclear Plant – the in-situ stresses and time-dependent deformations predictions for the construction of the intake tunnel were sufficiently accurate that it was deemed unnecessary to drill boreholes in the lake or install extensive instrumentation for the discharge tunnel, realizing significant cost savings. He also worked on the Niagara Tunnel from Niagara Falls to Queenston and the Billy Bishop Airport Tunnel in Toronto. He and his graduate students developed means to strengthen clays using electrokinetic forces. He also contributed significantly to the Ontario Hydro (now Ontario Power Generation) Dam Safety Program, developing innovative methods to quantify the safety of 151 dams constructed before the Second World War.