Taking various internal and external boundary conditions of pumps, valves, air valves, surge tanks, heterogeneous series of pipes and the downstream reservoir into consideration for a long-distance pressurized water transfer system, water hammer induced by pump failure in engineering construction was discussed based on the characteristic difference method. Sensitivity analysis of the time interval of pump restarting after pump failure and the roughness of the pipeline was carried out by numerical method. The results show that the reasonable time interval between pump failure and pump restarting can improve the hydrodynamic characteristics of the pressurized water transfer system as well as its components in the hydraulic transition process, which can reduce the size of the surge tank and the engineering cost. The roughness affects head loss and water hammer attenuation but has little influence on the hydrodynamic characteristics of the whole system in the hydraulic transition process.