BWDB Officials Trained on Project Management, PPA/PPR/e-GP Procurement Compliance and Climate-Smart Execution

Management and Training International (MTI) Ltd. conducted the two-day training course on Project Management — focusing on project lifecycle, financial management, procurement compliance (PPA/PPR/e-GP) and climate-smart execution on 1 and 2 July 2026 at the BWDB Training Institute (BTI), Bhagyakul, Munshiganj. Twenty-five officials of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), under the Ministry of Water Resources, took part — the opening batch of Package 22 of the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Water Management Project (CSAWM Project), BWDB Part.

Package 22 Opens on the Delivery Side

Package 21 began with the governance question: what the law, the policy and the community framework require of the Bangladesh Water Development Board. Package 22 opens with the operational one — how a project actually gets built. Over two days this course walked the cohort along a single continuous track: identify the need, test whether the scheme is technically and economically viable, decompose it into a work breakdown structure, cost and budget it, release funds against certified bills, tender it lawfully under the Public Procurement Act and the e-GP system, administer the resulting contract, and then build it in a way that survives flood, erosion and salinity.

Framed that way, the four subject areas in the course title are not four topics. They are four consecutive points of failure on the same project, and an officer who is strong at one and weak at the next still produces a scheme that fails.

Inauguration, Pre-Evaluation and Course Leadership

Pijush Krishna Kundu, Additional Chief Engineer (Civil) and Project Director of the CSAWM Project (BWDB Part), opened the course and returned on the second afternoon to close it. The opening session ran straight from the welcome remarks into participant introductions and expectations, then into a written pre-evaluation — the same instrument repeated as a post-evaluation at the end of Day 2, so the learning gain across the two days is measured rather than assumed.

Course administration was handled by the BWDB Training Institute, with the CSAWM Project supplying the Course Evaluator.

Resource Persons

Five senior BWDB officials delivered the eight sessions. The line-up is worth reading closely: Muhammad Shohiduzzaman Sharker and Md. Halim Shalehy — who served as Course Coordinator and Assistant Course Coordinator respectively for the first Package 21 batch a week earlier — appear here as resource persons, with Md. Halim Shalehy carrying all four sessions of Day 2 single-handed. The Training Institute is not only hosting this programme; its faculty is progressively taking over its delivery.

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

Both days ran the same four-session rhythm — 09:00–10:20, 10:40–12:00, 12:00–13:20 and 14:20–15:40 — with a tea break at 10:20, prayer and lunch from 13:20, and refreshment from 15:40 to 16:00.

Training Methodology

The two days leaned heavily on the experience already in the room. With Superintending Engineers from a field circle, a Controller from Finance Accounts & Audit and the Training Institute's own faculty delivering, experience sharing was written into five of the eight sessions as a formal method rather than left to chance in the Q&A. VIPP card work carried the financial-management sessions, and the course closed on a case study.

Group Work & VIPP Poster Presentations

On the second afternoon the cohort split into groups and worked the material onto flip charts using VIPP cards — the coloured-card technique that forces a group to reduce an argument to a single line per card before it can be pinned up. Each group then defended its board in front of the room. The output is visible in the photographs: structured boards mapping problems to responses, argued through rather than copied from a slide.

Participant Feedback

Feedback was collected from the floor on both days rather than only on a form at the end — participants were invited to comment on pacing, on the depth of the procurement content, and on how far the sessions matched the problems they meet in their own divisions and circles.

Who Was in the Room

This cohort is weighted toward the people who write and appraise project documents rather than those who sign contracts. Six research officers — in agriculture, economics, fisheries, and environment & forest — came from the Directorates of Planning-1, Planning-2 and Planning-3, the Directorate of Economic Evaluation and the Office of the Chief Engineer, Planning. Alongside them sat six civil engineers from field divisions in Rajbari, Jashore, Munshiganj and Gopalganj, three assistant extension officers from Chandpur, Noakhali and Faridpur, three assistant chiefs covering sociology, fisheries and environment & forest, and four officials from Accounts, Finance and Audit.

That is a deliberate pairing. The research officers appraise whether a scheme is viable; the engineers build it; the accounts and audit officers certify the money. Putting all three in one room for the lifecycle and financial-management sessions is precisely what makes the feasibility-to-audit chain legible to each of them.

Full Participant Roster

Closing Ceremony & Certification

The Project Director closed the course on the afternoon of 2 July 2026, immediately after the post-evaluation, and certificates were distributed to all twenty-five participants.

The Course in Pictures

Twenty-eight further photographs from the two days at the BWDB Training Institute, Bhagyakul — the opening ceremony and introductions, the eight technical sessions, the VIPP group work and the certificate ceremony.

Why This Matters

Most public infrastructure does not fail at the moment of construction. It fails earlier — in a feasibility study that overstated demand, a work breakdown that omitted a component, a tender package structured so that only one bidder could realistically qualify, a fund release that arrived a season late, or a design that ignored the erosion regime of the river it sits beside. Each of those failures happens in a different office, and each of those offices sent someone to this course.

Naming PPR-2025 and e-GP explicitly matters too. Procurement compliance in Bangladesh is now substantially a digital process: tenders are published, submitted and opened online, and an officer who understands the Public Procurement Act in principle but not the e-GP workflow in practice is still a compliance risk. Teaching the legal framework and the system operation in the same session is the correct pairing.

And placing climate-smart execution at the end of the sequence — after the money and the procurement, not before them — makes the point the CSAWM Project exists to make. Climate resilience is not a design philosophy bolted onto a finished scheme. It is a set of choices about hazard, materials, safeguards and monitoring indicators that have to survive the budget line and the tender document to reach the embankment.

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