In order to control the maximum temperature in an arch dam during its construction period, a performance function for control of the maximum temperature in the dam body was constructed based on the reliability theory, in which the influences of randomness of the atmospheric temperature and concrete parameters on the temperature field and stress field of the arch dam were considered, and the atmospheric temperature and concrete parameters were taken as the random variables. The response surface method was used to solve the problem, in which the performance function cannot be explicitly expressed, and a new mode for solving the failure probability and reliability index of temperature control in the dam body during the construction of the arch dam was developed. The calculation results show that the error of this method is less than 8.36％ as compared with the results of the Monte Carlo method. The method allows the user to avoid largescale numerical computation and improve the computational efficiency significantly with a high level of accuracy.