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 SMEC grew out of the Snowy Mountains Scheme which was a
massive hydropower and irrigation project undertaken in Australia between
1949 and 1974. The purpose of the scheme was to divert the rivers of south
eastern Australia back towards the west to provide irrigation water and
also to generate peak load electricity for the states of New South Wales
and Victoria. At the time it was the largest infrastructure project in
Australian history involving the construction of seven large dams, seven
power stations and one pumping station, over 144 kilometres of tunnels, 80
kilometres of aqueducts and 1000 kilometres of roads. The Commonwealth
Government financed the Scheme with the assistance of a $100 million loan
from the World Bank.
 The scheme was administered by the Snowy Mountains Authority (SMA) owned by
the Australian Government. By 1960 SMA was in demand to design and manage
development projects in Australia and overseas, particularly on behalf of the
Australian aid program. The early projects were primarily in water resources
development, power generation and transmission and road engineering, using
skills acquired during the Snowy Mountains Scheme. However, SMEC's capability
expanded rapidly to encompass irrigation, rural and regional development,
training and capacity building.
Early projects overseas included:
- geological investigation along the Mekong River
- road construction in
northern Thailand; and
- hydropower development in Cambodia and Malaysia.
Early projects in Australia included:
- the design of Fairbairn Dam in central Queensland,
- supervision of
construction of the Ord Dam in the north of Western Australia
- the Eastern
Suburbs Railway in Sydney; and
- Shoalhaven water supply/pumped storage project in
New South Wales.
 As the Snowy Mountains Scheme approached completion the Australian Government
decided that the skills developed in SMA should be retained for application in
Australia and overseas. Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC) was
therefore established under Act of Parliament in 1970 as an agency of the
Commonwealth Government. Many SMA staff were transferred to SMEC over the next
few years. During the 1970s the company expanded its international operations to
include work with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and SMEC's first
overseas office was established in Kuala Lumpur. SMEC was corporatised in 1989
and privatised by sale to the staff in 1993.
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