Second IWRM Batch: BWDB Officials Trained on Water Policy 1999, Water Act 2013 & Water Resources Regulations 2018

Management and Training International (MTI) Ltd. conducted the second running of the three-day course on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), focusing on the National Water Policy 1999, the Water Act 2013 and the Water Resources Regulations 2018, from 15 to 17 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 fifth batch under Package 21 of the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project (CSAWM Project), BWDB Part.

Same Laws, a Different Room

The first IWRM batch ran in June at the BWDB Training Institute in Bhagyakul, Munshiganj. This second running moved to Pani Bhaban, to a cohort weighted much more heavily towards senior engineers: six Executive Engineers and five Sub-Divisional Engineers, most of them from the design circles that turn policy into drawings. The legal spine of the course did not change — the National Water Policy 1999, the National Water Management Plan 2001, the participatory framework of 2000 and 2014, the BWDB Act 2000, and the Water Act 2013 with its 2018 Regulations — but the questions it was asked did.

For a design engineer the useful question about the Water Act is not “what does it say” but “what does it require of the scheme I am drawing” — licensing of abstraction, environmental safeguards in dredging and construction, the inspection and reporting that will follow. The course was organised to arrive there: principles on Day 1, the institutions that apply them on Day 2, and the law that enforces them on Day 3, closing with an integration and action-planning session in which groups applied all three to a case.

Resource Persons

Eight resource persons delivered the twelve sessions. Dr. Robin Kumar Biswas, Additional Chief Engineer in the Office of the Chief Engineer, Planning, carried the backbone of the course — IWRM principles and fundamentals on Day 1, and the Water Act and Water Resources Regulations on Day 3. Three Deputy Chief Extension Officers took the participatory framework, two Superintending Engineers of the CSAWM and B-Strong projects took the BWDB Act, integration and review, and the Directorate of Planning-1 took national policy and planning.

Course Leadership

The Legal and Policy Stack, in Order

The twelve sessions climb the stack of instruments that governs water in Bangladesh, from principle to enforceable rule.

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

Each session combined a short presentation with a participatory method. Day 1 opened with a game, the policy session used VIPP cards, the stakeholder session worked through a case study, and the Water Act was taught through open discussion and small group work. Every day began with a recap of the day before.

Group Presentations

The final afternoon belonged to the participants. Groups presented back what they had taken from each instrument — the policy and legal framework, the 2000 Guidelines for Participatory Water Management, the historical background of the PWM Rules 2014 — with their own slides on the lab screen.

Who Was in the Room

Sixteen of the twenty-five participants were engineers: six Executive Engineers, five Sub-Divisional Engineers and five Assistant Engineers. Five of them came from Design Circle-7 alone (including its Design & Research wing), with others from Design Circles 3, 5 and 6, the Offices of the Chief Engineer for Planning and for Monitoring, the Office of the Director General and the Joint Rivers Commission. A Deputy Chief Extension Officer, a Research Officer, an Assistant Director, two Sub-Assistant Engineers and four accounts staff completed the cohort. Every participant was based in Dhaka.

Full Participant Roster

Closing Ceremony & Certification

The Project Director closed the course on the afternoon of 17 September 2026. After the post-evaluation and course evaluation, certificates were handed to the participants at the dais.

The Course in Pictures

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

Why This Matters

Bangladesh’s water law is unusually complete on paper. The difficulty is that each instrument was written at a different time, for a different purpose, and a project engineer meets them one at a time — the policy at the concept stage, the participatory rules at handover, the Water Act when a licence or an inspection is due. Integrated Water Resources Management is, in practice, the habit of reading them together before the first drawing is made.

Running the course a second time, for a cohort led by Executive Engineers from the design circles, takes that habit to the point where it is cheapest to apply: before a scheme is designed rather than after it is built. Under the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project, where every intervention has to balance agriculture, fisheries, flood control and the rights of water users, that is where integration has to start.

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