International engineering and project management consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV has signed a €10.5 million contract with the Bangladesh Water Development Board for engineering consultancy services to protect Bangladesh’s vulnerable coastal zone, home to millions of people.
The next six years Royal HaskoningDHV will be responsible for the detailed design, construction supervision and project management support of hundreds of kilometers of embankment to protect 17 coastal polders and its inhabitants and their livelihoods from natural disasters and climate change. The total project area is some 1,000 square kilometers.
The contract is part of the World Bank financed Coastal Embankment Improvement Project, Phase-1 (CEIP-1) of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
Mr Sarafat Hossain Khan, CEIP-1 Project Director of the Bangladesh Water Development Board, said: “ The vulnerability of the coastal population is on the rise due to climate change. Climate variability will accentuate the intrinsic risks facing coastal Bangladesh. These risks span cyclones and storm surges, river bank erosion and vulnerability of islands and chars, sea level rise, saline water intrusion, and coastal river erosion. A recent study indicated that if a 10 year return period cyclone hit our coastal area today, about 8 million people will be affected by inundation depths greater than 3 meters.”
The contract was signed 30 December 2014 during a special signing ceremony in Dhaka by Mr Sarafat Hossain Khan of the Bangladesh Water Development Board and Mr Roelof Moll of Royal HaskoningDHV. Present also were several high officials from the Ministry of Water Resources, Bangladesh, the World Bank, the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology BUET and His Excellency Mr Gerben de Jong, Dutch Ambassador to Bangladesh.
Royal HaskoningDHV will be working with a team of four sub-consultants: Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) and from Bangladesh: DevConsultants (DevCon), Design Planning & Management Consultants (DPM) and the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM).
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Press Release