Young Professional Dam Safety Training and Capacity Building in Ethiopia Webinar: March 2026

March 26, 2026 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (MDT)

Description

This webinar will discuss building capacity and experience for Young Professionals (YP) in civil engineering professions and more specifically within dam safety tends to occur through hands-on experience with experienced senior professionals. In certain parts of the Nile Basin, experienced senior dam safety officials have many duties and lack time to train YPs who would be interested in building capacity to support a growing dams industry. USSD sponsored four YPs to attend a dam safety training in Ethiopia during the first week of March 2025 to build capacity and strengthen relationships with global partners. From March 4-8, 2025, the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) hosted a weeklong dam safety training for YPs in Koysha, Ethiopia. ENTRO coordinated with the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) and its partners, including USSD, to facilitate the weeklong training for YPs at the active construction site on the Omo River. The focus of the training was the use of instrumentation at dams and Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) construction quality control and quality assurance. Instructors consisted of ICOLD members with broad experience in dam safety with a Ph.D. in a relevant engineering field. Participants of the training event received four days of classroom instruction with corresponding site visits to observe relevant construction or materials testing components of the dam construction project germane to the classroom instruction. The classroom instruction included discussion about instrumentation design and installation, data collection, data analysis, case histories, an overview of RCC construction methods, and quality control methods for RCC construction. Site visits included opportunities to observe active construction of the Koysha RCC dam, materials testing in the onsite laboratory facilities, inspection of field-testing locations and installed instruments. Selection of individuals to attend by USSD and ENTRO was contingent on sharing with other YPs in USSD, which is the objective of this paper and presentation.