MWH Iraq reconstruction project wins APM Overseas Project of the Year award

LONDON, Nov. 13, 2007 -- The prestigious APM Overseas Project of the Year award, presented by the Association for Project Management, was this week presented to leading water and environmental engineering company MWH for a reconstruction project looking at water and waste planning solutions for Iraq.

This complex project was headed by MWH Design and Overall Project Lead Technical Manager Nigel Read and Project Manager Andy Bent-Marshall, working with colleagues from MWH's UK headquarters in Warrington, MWH Belfast, and MWH in the United States. Adrian Dooley, of The Projects Group Plc -- sponsor of the APM Overseas Project of the Year Award, presented this year's trophy to Bent-Marshall and Read.

Nigel Read explains: "This project is all about capacity building, not aid. It is about providing the Iraqis with the skills to help themselves. The project required international co-ordination and management of teams in eight offices on three different continents, all working to improve the lives of the Iraqi people following years of conflict and loss of essential public health facilities."

The project began in November 2006 when MWH's Federal Group in the United States was commissioned by the United States Air Force Centre for Environmental Excellence (AFCEE) to carry out a project for the reconstruction programme in Iraq.

The project comprised:
• A wastewater treatment works design
• A solid waste (rubbish) landfill design
• Raw water hydraulic computer modelling for the Baghdad area, providing a computer model of water flows and capacities for irrigation use
• A National Solid Waste Master Plan for rubbish disposal

The total cost of the project was just over $4 million (around £2 million). MWH in the UK took sole responsibility for the raw water model and the solid waste master plan, and for the process, civil and mechanical design of the waste water treatment works. This accounted for over £800,000 of the total project budget, with the US team carrying out the landfill design and the electrical and ICA design of the treatment works. The University of Baghdad was a sub-consultant on the project, carrying out work in Iraq including data collection, topographical, hydrological and geotechnical surveys, and fieldwork connected with the raw water modelling.

"The idea behind the project is to provide the Iraqis with templated designs for future construction - basically providing them with the designs to do the job. Similarly, the solid waste master plan identified rubbish disposal methods currently in place and has produced a strategy for rubbish disposal for the next 20 years", said Andy Bent-Marshall.

"The overall aim was to provide easy to implement projects to give early benefits to the Iraqi people, and tools and training to enable Iraqi engineers to undertake further development and reconstruction throughout the country, without the use of outside help," concluded Nigel.

The UK project team, spread between offices in High Wycombe, Warrington and Belfast, the United States team in Cleveland and Chicago, and the MWH subcontractor, University of Baghdad, required well-organised management through virtual team working utilising Projectwise, Quickplace, Raindance and Sametime software. MWH, client and stakeholder meetings were held in Amman, Jordan, and Istanbul, Turkey, to discuss progress, review work and carry out capacity building. Weekly conference calls were held with the client, and also between MWH project team leaders to report progress and resolve managerial and technical issues. Primavera was used to plan and monitor progress and expenditure, and was updated on a weekly basis.

About APM
APM (www.apm.org.uk) is Europe's largest national body dedicated to project management excellence. It has over 15,000 individual and 300 corporate members throughout the UK and abroad. APM's key objectives are to develop and promote project management across all sectors of industry and beyond.

About MWH
MWH (www.mwhglobal.com) is a private, employee-owned firm with approximately 6,000 employees worldwide. The company provides water, wastewater, energy, natural resource, program management, consulting and construction services to industrial, municipal, utility and government clients in Europe, the Americas, Middle East, India, Asia and the Pacific Rim. MWH has worked in the UK for over 160 years and has designed, built and managed many of the largest, most innovative and technologically advanced projects around the world.

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