BWDB Officials Trained on Operation & Maintenance of FCD/FCDI Projects — Exit Strategy and Post-Transfer Sustainability

Management and Training International (MTI) Ltd. conducted the three-day training course on Operation & Maintenance of FCD/FCDI Projects, with a focus on the Exit Strategy and Post-Transfer Sustainability, from 1 to 3 September 2026 at the Central ICT Lab, Level-11, Pani Bhaban, BWDB, Dhaka. Twenty-five officials of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), under the Ministry of Water Resources, took part — the fourth batch under Package 21 of the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project (CSAWM Project), BWDB Part.

The Day After the Project Ends

Bangladesh has built thousands of kilometres of embankment, and hundreds of regulators, sluices and drainage canals, under Flood Control and Drainage (FCD) and Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI) schemes. The engineering is rarely what fails. What fails is the decade after commissioning — when a gate is left jammed, a drainage channel silts up, a cut in the embankment is never closed, and nobody is quite sure whose job it was.

This course was built around that decade. Its subtitle — Exit Strategy and Post-Transfer Sustainability — names the question every session returned to: when BWDB hands a scheme to the Water Management Association that will run it, what has to be true on the day of transfer for the scheme still to be working ten years later? The three days moved from what the structures need (Day 1), to who pays and who decides (Day 2), to what can go wrong and how to watch for it (Day 3).

Ten Resource Persons, Twelve Sessions

No other Package 21 course has drawn on as wide a panel. Ten senior professionals delivered the twelve sessions: three Superintending Engineers from the planning directorates and the Surface Water Hydrology Circle on strategy, monitoring and risk; three Deputy Chief Extension Officers on the institutions and money behind O&M; an Executive Engineer on hands-on maintenance practice; the Director of the BPDB-BWDB Engineering Academy at Kaptai on the handover itself; and the Board’s Chief Water Management (PRL) on gender and leadership. The Project Director opened the course by explaining where O&M sits inside the CSAWM Project.

Course Leadership

Six Conditions for a Scheme That Outlives Its Project

Taken together, the sessions set out what has to be in place before BWDB can step back from a scheme.

Day-by-Day Course Schedule

Participants reported to the Central ICT Lab at 08:30 on the first morning and at 09:00 on the following two days. Each day ran four sessions and closed at 16:00.

Training Methodology

The course module paired each topic with a method suited to it. Strategy and handover were taught by lecture and experience sharing; the WMA, WMG and O&M sub-committee session used VIPP cards so participants could map duties themselves; monitoring and risk used poster demonstrations and small groups; and gender and leadership closed with open discussion.

Group Presentations

Participants worked in groups and presented their findings back to the class during the course. The groups mixed Executive Engineers from the design circles with Sub-Assistant Engineers, Extension Overseers and a Work Assistant who carry out O&M in the field — so the exit plans they presented were tested by the people who would actually have to run them.

Who Was in the Room

This was the most field-facing cohort in Package 21 so far. Alongside two Executive Engineers, six Sub-Divisional and Assistant Engineers and a System Analyst from headquarters sat four Sub-Assistant Engineers, three Extension Overseers and an Assistant Extension Officer, and a Work Assistant — the cadre who actually walk the embankments and operate the gates. Seven participants travelled in from field offices in Narsingdi, Chandpur, Moulvibazar, Feni, Chattogram and Cumilla. In all, twenty-one offices were represented.

Full Participant Roster

Closing Ceremony & Certification

The Project Director closed the course on the afternoon of 3 September 2026. After the post-evaluation and the participants’ course evaluation, certificates were handed to each participant at the dais.

The Course in Pictures

Thirteen further photographs from the three days at the Central ICT Lab, Pani Bhaban.

Why This Matters

Every scheme the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project builds or rehabilitates will eventually be handed over. If the handover is a ceremony and a signature, the scheme starts to decline the following monsoon. If it is the end of a plan — a trained Water Management Association, a fund that does not depend on the project, an agreed maintenance calendar and someone watching the indicators — the investment keeps paying for itself.

By bringing the engineers who design FCD/FCDI structures into the same room as the Sub-Assistant Engineers, Extension Overseers and Work Assistants who maintain them, and teaching the exit strategy as a sequence rather than an event, this course worked on the part of water infrastructure that a construction contract cannot buy.

More from this Programme

Programme Snapshot

Frequently Asked Questions