Commonwealth Alumnus Waseem Akhtar is Senior Geotechnical Engineer at the National Engineering Services Pakistan (Pvt.) Ltd, a leading engineering consultancy in Pakistan. He is currently posted at Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan.
Once completed, the dam is expected to produce 800MW of clean renewable energy, deliver irrigation water to approximately 6,700 hectares of land, and store around 1.5 billion m3 of water which will help control flooding and supply drinking water for residential use. In addition, the project is expected to facilitate the socio-economic uplift of the area through employment opportunities and improvement in local infrastructure.
As the Senior Geotechnical Engineer, Waseem’s responsibilities include conducting slope stability analysis and designing rock support systems for surface and underground excavations. The rock support systems will ensure stability against land sliding and slope failure that can seriously damage project structures and components.
The importance of dams and hydropower in climate change mitigation
Dams and hydropower projects are of great importance, not only for their energy generation but also the secondary benefits they provide. In Pakistan, a significant secondary benefit is the water storage capacity of dams and utilising this to combat severe flooding.
Due to climate change, Pakistan is experiencing an increase in flooding, with the recent floods in 2010 and 2022 causing billions of dollars of damage and significant loss of life. Mega hydropower projects, such as the Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project, can be used to store flood water through the dam’s reservoir system. This reduces the impact of flooding on the local environment and surrounding communities. Water can then be gradually released back into the natural rivers when these run dry in the summer period.
“We need to have these multipurpose dams and hydropower projects in Pakistan. This is one of the mega projects that our government is focusing on, and we hope to provide all these benefits during the next coming years.”
Waseem’s role supports the geotechnical aspects of the project, assessing the natural mountain and hilly slopes that will be cut into to create the dam structures. This work poses a risk of landslides and slope instabilities which can not only damage the security and effectiveness of the dam, but also the local area.
Alongside these assessments, Waseem is responsible for the design of the underground excavations, which includes the tunnels, caverns and shafts which will support the diversion of the river water to feed the dam, irrigation supplies and the main tunnel providing water to the powerhouse which will generate the energy from the reservoir.
Addressing earthquake risks in mega projects
Waseem’s contributions to the project are critical and require precise work. Alongside the general risks of constructing a mega structure in such an environment, Waseem must also consider the risk of earthquakes.
Due to its geographical location, Pakistan experiences frequent and severe earthquakes. With a predicted lifetime of 50-100 years, the dam and hydropower structures will face multiple earthquakes and must be designed to withstand these.
He stresses that any failure of the dam due to geotechnical aspects or the impact of an earthquake will not only have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the dam in providing hydropower but also on the surrounding and downstream environment.
“This project is going to store billions of cubic metres of water. The failure of this dam is not only concerned with the failure of the structure, but the water that could be released. This could cause damage downstream, through flooding and impact people living downstream.”
Waseem’s Master’s in Earthquake Engineering at Imperial College London plays an important role in ensuring these structures are designed to be resilience against earthquakes.
“In earthquake engineering, there are two branches: structural earthquake engineering, which is the design of structures against earthquake effects, and geotechnical earthquake engineering, which deals with the effects of earthquakes on slopes, soil, rock, or any structure inside the ground.”
Waseem applies the skills and knowledge of geotechnical earthquake engineering to design and ensure that the structures, slopes and excavations can withstand earthquakes.
Reflecting in the importance of his Master’s programme, Waseem shares that despite the frequency of earthquakes in Pakistan, there is limited focus on earthquake engineering in the country’s universities. His Master’s enabled him to continue his interest in earthquake engineering from his undergraduate studies and gain access to important research and software.
“The modules at the Imperial College were based not only on the theoretical knowledge, but also on practical tools and skills. We learned different software for analysing structures against earthquakes… The software, tools and skills that I learned during my Master’s studies to design and analyse structures against earthquakes are still providing help to me during my career, doing this project.”
Having a Master’s degree focused on earthquake engineering has provided Waseem with a unique and sought-after skill set.
“If I did not have the opportunity to do this Master’s degree, I would have struggled on this project, on the scale, on the skills that are required, on the actual tasks that I’m doing.”
Waseem’s time at Imperial also exposed him to course mates and contacts from different countries and backgrounds. Having only studied and worked in Pakistan, this was a new experience and enabled him to grow his social skills and learn about different cultures and working in a multicultural and diverse environment.
These are important skills in his current role, where he works with multinational teams and can easily converse and collaborate with different stakeholders and workers.
Expanding knowledge for future mega projects
Waseem has always been interested in this area of engineering since completing undergraduate studies in 2014. Prior to his Commonwealth Scholarship and completing his Master’s, Waseem was involved in the design of small-scale hydropower projects.
Focusing on the design of projects meant his previous experience was consigned to desk work, however since completing his Master’s, being involved in the design and construction of the Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project has enabled him to work on-site and see his plans develop in real time.
“When you’re working inside an office, you’re working on pen and paper, your laptop, and you don’t get to see the scale of things that are going to happen.
“And then, one day, you go out and you see that this is something that I did, and it was on a paper, and then it’s a thousand times bigger in actual life. It feels good but it also feels more responsible, because this is something that’s actually going to be executed, so you need to be sure.”
Waseem notes that he’s lucky to be involved in such a project. Mega projects such as the Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project are infrequent due to the funding required and large-scale environmental and social impact of such structures.
In future, he hopes to expand the depth of his geotechnical experience and the range of projects he can apply this to and learn from. This includes water resources and irrigation projects which require the geotechnical and earthquake engineering skills.
“These mega-projects, although they give you a very good experience, they give you a lot of new things to learn. My plan is to get more depth in this area, to get more experience on the geotechnical aspects, and then I plan to get some width, in terms of other projects which require geotechnical and earthquake engineering.”
Waseem Akhtar is a 2015 Commonwealth Scholar from Pakistan. He completed an MSc in Earthquake Engineering at Imperial College London.
