Second Batch: BWDB Officials Trained on Project Management, PPA/e-GP Compliance and Climate-Smart Execution

Management and Training International (MTI) Ltd. conducted the second running of the training course on Project Management — focusing on project lifecycle, financial management, procurement compliance (PPA/e-GP) and climate-smart execution on 12 and 13 July 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 second batch of Package 22 of the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project (CSAWM Project), BWDB Part, and the fourth course delivered in the programme overall.

Same Module, Different Room, Different Faculty

Eleven days earlier the identical module ran as Package 22 Batch 1 at the BWDB Training Institute in Bhagyakul, taught largely by the Institute's own staff. This second batch is the more interesting one, because almost everything around the content changed.

The venue moved from a residential training institute in Munshiganj to the Central ICT Lab on Level-11 of Pani Bhaban — BWDB headquarters, a working computer lab a few floors from the directorates being discussed. And the resource-person panel was replaced wholesale, with each block handed to the office that owns it: the Directorate of Planning-1 on project lifecycle, the Directorate of Finance on budgets, funds and audit, the Contract and Procurement Cell on PPA and e-GP, and the Additional Chief Engineer (Civil), Hydrology on climate risk and resilient design.

That is a meaningful shift. In Batch 1 the cohort learned procurement compliance from experienced trainers; in Batch 2 they learned it from the cell that actually administers BWDB's contracts, and learned hazard identification from the engineer responsible for the Board's hydrology. The module did not deepen — the authority behind it did.

Course Leadership

Pijush Krishna Kundu, Additional Chief Engineer (Civil) and Project Director of the CSAWM Project (BWDB Part), opened the course on the morning of 12 July and returned on the second afternoon to close it. Course administration passed to the project's own extension and ICT staff, with a Course Evaluator drawn from the CSAWM Project.

Worth noting for anyone following the series: Md. Hafizur Rahman, Course Coordinator here, delivered three sessions as a resource person on the Package 21 Participatory Water Management course — and Muhammad Shahid Shikdar of the Directorate of Central ICT returns as Assistant Course Coordinator, the role held on that same course. The programme is rotating a stable core of people through delivery, coordination and evaluation roles rather than contracting them out.

Resource Persons — One Block, One Owning Office

Five senior BWDB officials delivered the eight sessions, and the mapping between subject and office is close to exact.

Eight Blocks, One Project

Each session pairs two sub-topics, and the eight blocks run in the order a real scheme encounters them.

Day-by-Day Course Schedule

Participants reported to the Central ICT Lab at 08:30 each morning, with four sessions a day running to a 16:00 close.

Training Methodology

The methods follow the module: experience sharing written formally into five of the eight sessions, VIPP card work carrying the two financial-management sessions, brainstorming through the procurement blocks, and a case study closing the course. In a room where ten of the twenty-five participants are serving engineers and five are audit and accounts officers, "experience sharing" is not a filler method — it is the mechanism by which a Sub-Divisional Engineer from Gaibandha and a Senior Assistant Director from the Directorate of Audit discover they have been describing the same delay from opposite ends.

Participant Feedback

Feedback was taken from the floor before the course closed — on pacing, on the depth of the procurement and e-GP material, and on how directly the sessions mapped onto the schemes participants are currently running in their own circles and sub-divisions.

Who Was in the Room — an Engineer-Heavy Cohort

Where Package 22's first batch leaned toward the research officers who appraise project documents, this one leaned toward the people who supervise the work. Ten of the twenty-five are serving engineers — one Executive Engineer, six Sub-Divisional Engineers and three Assistant Engineers, spanning civil, mechanical and electrical disciplines. They came from the Workshop Division and Dhaka Mechanical Circle at Tejgaon, Design Circle-3, the Office of the Chief Engineer (Planning), and WD sub-divisions in Gaibandha, Chandpur, Jashore and the Meghna-Dhonagoda command area.

Sitting with them were five finance, accounts and audit officers — from the Directorate of Audit, the Green Road Regional Accounting Centre and the CSAWM Project itself — plus four deputy chiefs and deputy chief extension officers, two assistant chiefs in sociology and soil, and officers from research, extension and Training & HRD. Twenty-one distinct directorates and offices, reaching from headquarters out to Thakurgaon, Natore, Gaibandha, Chandpur, Jashore and Munshiganj.

That composition is the module's own logic made physical: the engineer who writes the bill of quantities, the officer who certifies the payment and the auditor who later questions it, worked through cost variance and e-GP bid evaluation in the same room.

Full Participant Roster

Closing Ceremony & Certification

The Project Director closed the course on the afternoon of 13 July 2026, immediately after the post-evaluation, and certificates were distributed to all twenty-five participants.

The Course in Pictures

Thirteen further photographs from the two days at the Central ICT Lab, Pani Bhaban — the opening introductions, the eight technical sessions and the certificate ceremony.

Why This Matters

Running the same module twice in eleven days is not repetition for its own sake. Across roughly 70–74 batches, a curriculum only holds its value if it survives being taught by different people to different rooms — and this second running is where the programme tested that. The content stayed fixed; the venue, the panel and the cohort's professional centre of gravity all changed.

The gain from that swap is specific. When the Contract and Procurement Cell teaches e-GP bid handling, the answer to "what happens if a bidder disputes the evaluation" comes from the office that will actually receive the complaint. When the Additional Chief Engineer for Hydrology teaches hazard identification, flood and erosion risk stop being categories on a slide and become the Board's own datasets. And when the Directorate of Finance teaches fund flow to a room containing three Senior Assistant Directors from Audit and the Regional Accounting Centre, the discussion about delayed releases has both sides of the ledger present.

For BWDB, that is what institutionalising a course looks like: not a training package bought in, but a module the Board's own directorates can each teach their part of — which is the only version that outlasts the project funding it.

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