Abstract: Concrete face dam has been a main type of dams in modern times. In the early period, only hard rock materials were allowed to use as filling materials. But in the past ten years, soft rock materials have been increasingly utilized in concrete face dams to save construction time and costs.Even in a few of high dams, soft rock materials were put in the main filling zones. In the near future, it may be possible that using soft rock material to built concrete face dams of more than 100 m in height. So, it is important to make more studies on the engineering properties of soft rock materials. This paper gives a summarization and evaluation of the physical and mechanical properties of soft rock materials on the basis of the test researches and application practices in the Daao Dam, Yutiao Dam, Siping Dam, etc..