Early Days

Born in 1924, Don Gunasena attended St John’s College and Sri Sumangala College, Panadura, and wanted to study engineering. His parents had wanted him to join the family business in Colombo, but he preferred to study science and enrolled in the Ceylon Technical College, the premier institution of higher education for technical and engineering studies before the establishment of the University of Ceylon.  The Ceylon Technical College was part of the Ceylon University College and was affiliated with the University of London.

 

At that time there were only two engineering disciplines – Civil Engineering and Military Engineering.  During the war years, Military Engineering trained students towards a career in the military to build temporary structures such as bridges made of timber, for example, for troops to cross a river.  They were not built to last.  But Don Gunasena was more interested in permanent structures like public works to build roads, bridges, dams, and buildings, etc and wanted a career in non-military fields.  Those days, electrical and mechanical engineering fell within the wider umbrella of civil engineering.

 

After finishing his studies at the Ceylon Technical College, he continued his studies in the UK and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering.  His formal training was followed by practical training at Willment Brothers in Middlesex for a year that was and with Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners in London for about two years.  He returned to Sri Lanka in 1955 and joined the Department of Industries as an engineer and managed and supervised contracts and negotiations till about 1961.

State Engineering Corporation

In 1962, Don Gunasena joined the newly established State Engineering Corporation as one of the founding members of staff at the formation of the Corporation.  He was appointed to the post of Projects Engineer under the organizational structure at that time. He rose quickly to be the deputy to the founding Chairman and General Manager ANS Kulasinghe, and from 1 January 1966 was appointed formally to the post of Deputy General Manager.  In this post, he reported directly to Kulasinghe and was responsible for coordinating and controlling all departments of activity in the Corporation such as the Construction Department, Planning & Production Department, Mechanical & Electrical Department. Research & Development Division, Personnel Division, Accounts Division, Supplies Division, and General Administration Division.

 

Responsibilities that devolved on Don Gunasena in directing, coordinating, and controlling the activities under the different departments were therefore quite heavy.  In March 1970, he was appointed a Director of the Corporation in addition to his duties as Deputy General Manager.  During his tenure, the Corporation constructed large industrial complexes such as the Thulhiriya Textile Mills, Steel Corporation, etc to name a few and notable structures such as the Colombo Planetarium and the Kalutara hemispherical shell Chaitya.

 

In the 1960s there were mostly two or three-story buildings in Colombo.  The technology to construct higher story buildings came about when the SEC was set up.  The Head Office of the SEC at WAD Ramanayake Mawatha in Slave Island was quite an advancement in those days and was the tallest building at the time.

 

Teaming up with the other engineers, the Kulasinghe and Athukorala duo were able to transform the SEC from a modest corporation to the dominant heavy engineering construction concern in the country. The SEC introduced many modern technologies in the 1960s in Sri Lanka. One of these technologies was pre-cast concrete technology.  To improve productivity, concrete was produced in re-usable molds at off-site pre-cast yards in Ekala and Narahenpita and then transported to construction sites throughout the country for assembly.  This was in contrast to the slower standard concrete processes that were poured at each separate construction site.  Pre-cast technologies enhanced the speed of the construction.  Don Gunasena visited the Soviet Union and France to study the pre-cast technologies. The SEC built two precast concrete yards, one at Narahenpita where the Lanka Hospital stands now and the other in Ekala.

 

The Colombo Planetarium was a noteworthy construction of the SEC.  Designed by the eminent ANS Kulasinghe for the Ceylon Industrial Exhibition in 1964 to showcase local engineering talent, Don Gunasena was responsible for carrying out construction work.  The challenge had also been to build the planetarium in a short period. Therefore, the conventional method of shuttering and “in situ” concrete was unsuitable.  As such pre-cast and pre-stressed folded plates were manufactured at the concrete factory, transported, and assembled on site.

 

The SECs’ two early constructions were the Athurugiriya steel factory and the Kelaniya tire factory aimed to rekindle the spirit of nationalism, to innovate, and adopt techniques that had not been tried in Sri Lanka before.

Housing Schemes

In addition to building challenging structures, the SEC also got involved in constructing housing schemes that were less of a challenge to creative engineering minds.  But there was a growing need for housing especially in Colombo due to the growing urban population, inadequate road infrastructure and transportation, and scarce availability of land. As such, the government wanted to build a housing scheme in Colombo. Don Gunasena was sent to the former Soviet Union to study housing techniques.

 

Mushroom types of water towers were another construction that had done by the SEC under Don Gunasena’s direct supervision. Previous water towers were built with the water tanks on the top of a structure, were not appealing to the eye, and had taken up too much space and the government was looking for a solution. The SEC proposed to build mushroom type water towers, a cylindrical tower built with an inverted cone type of water tank on the top.  The first water tower was built for the Bandaranaike International Airport.

 

With the change of government in 1970, the Minister of Housing and Construction, Peter Keuneman, required those leadership roles of all corporations within his ministry to be given to members of the Communist Party.  That marked the beginning of a brain-drain that set off a series of permanent departures of senior engineering talent to foreign countries and the private sector.  Don Gunasena left for the UK and worked for Williams Brothers in London and Esso Petroleum in Libya.

 

At the time of his departure in February 1971, ANS. Kulasinghe, Chairman SEC paid tribute to Don Gunasena and wrote

 

“I wish to express my deep appreciation of the devoted and long-standing services rendered by Don Gunasena to the Corporation.  In the key position he held, he was directly involved in the development of the Corporation during his service in the Corporation, he also had the opportunity of gaining valuable experience in the management of different departments of activity…such as heavy engineering construction techniques using the pre-cast method, prefabricated industrialized housing, planning and design of large industrial buildings and use of computers in engineering calculations and data processing”

Chairman of SEC

After a five year stint at the Mahaweli Development Board as a Deputy General Manager, Don Gunasena returned to the SEC, this time as Chairman in August 1977.   This period was marked by the new Accelerated Mahaweli River Development Program and a shift in the type of housing from multi-story high-density housing to single houses under the Gam Udawa vision.

 

The SEC was contracted by the Ministry of Irrigation to construct the Pologolla barrage and the Ukewela dam etc. In these tasks, Don Gunasena was assisted by senior engineers seconded from Irrigation Department to Mahaweli Development Board. The task during Phase I was not easy as there were several drawbacks during construction. Polgolla tunnel leakage, flood damages during the construction of Polgolla barrage, Ukuwela Powerhouse base construction issues were looked at as critical items, and planning was revised accordingly. His structural engineering knowledge was well suited to contribute to these construction issues.

 

During this period, he directed the large scale construction of single houses in ‘reawakened’ villages throughout the country.  As much as single-family houses served the people, it was less of a challenge to an engineer used to constructing large scale housing complexes.

 

Don Gunasena joined the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka as the founding Director of the Headworks division. The headwork division was a newly formed division and the main function of the division was to take over the administration, operations, and maintenance work of completed structures.

 

Undertaking the management of the completed Mahaweli dams was no an easy task. There was a lot of background work to be done. He spearheaded the establishment of proper maintenance process for the Mahaweli and personally wrote many maintenance manuals for various instruments of dams. For example, the Victoria dam alone had 269 various types of instruments, to check various types of movements, pressures, stresses, and strains. Don Gunasena studied these instruments and wrote work manuals himself for many of them. To date, none of the Mahaweli structures had failed and is a testament to solid construction and maintenance. There are some dams in the world which had failed with serious damage. The maintenance processes are ongoing even today. A lot of credit should go to people like Don Gunasena who set a solid foundation.

In his retirement, he authored the book “Buddha’s Principle of Relativity” in 2011 and available on Amazon.com. He is 96 years old now and spends his retired life in Australia with his wife and children.