By Editor in chief, Kaied Ghiyatha, London UK
I write today about a distinguished Palestinian Engineer who has excelled in his field. His work and his personality deserve to be recognized.
He is Adnan Azazmeh, born in Nahalin – Bethlehem district in Palestine in 1980 to a family that moved from the Azazmeh area in the Nagab desert in the South of Palestine.
Adnan is a graduate of Palestine Polytechnic University and hold a BA in Civil Engineering. In addition, Adnan is currently studying part time on a master’s program in International Cooperation and Development at Bethlehem University.
Adnan has experience in working for international development agencies in the field of Occupational Health, Safety, Environment (HSE) and project management includes to the management, review, analysis, training and implementation of multi-phase environmental/sector programs.
His work always included, a specific emphasis on team building, training, performance monitoring and evaluation, conflict management, stakeholder inclusion, client coordination.
Adnan is also an expert at managing OHS field inspections, startup of new programs as well as managing program close-outs. He has trained over 100 professionals, in both long (on-the-job) and short-term training programs on Occupational Health and Safety in Palestine; also in Jordan based on USA OSHA standards during the last seven years in order to prepare them to prepare OHS plans, traffic control plans, accident prevention plans and to monitor the compliance of said programs during their projects’ implementation.
Adnan’s involvement in the implementation management of infrastructure and environmental projects from the concept to implementation phase has enabled him to develop excellent hands-on experience in monitoring, briefing, evaluation, presentation and reporting skills, as well as senior representation on behalf of funding and implementing partner organizations.
Mr Azazmeh’s experience stems mainly from work carried out in the West Bank and in Gaza, both in actual infrastructure environmental project delivery with USAID and later on in sector policy analysis, as part ofthe Office of Quartet (OQ) water team.
Under the USAID Infrastructure Needs Program – Phase II, Adnan was tasked to lead a large team of professionals and specialists in project start-up, team building, office establishment, environmental technical support, construction management support, project delivery and coordination for major infrastructure development in Gaza.
This entailed: selecting the team, reviewing OHS plans, reviewing environmental plans , training and managing the team in Gaza with frequent visits between our program office in Ramallah and our field offices in Gaza, and then Occupational Health and Safety QC inspections to ensure compliance with the requirements, development of processes, procedures, Adnan is more than familiar with the workings, managers and operations of the Palestinian Authority and in particular most of the line ministries and development agencies/ donors working in Palestine (i.e. EU, World Bank, AFD, KFW, Netherlands representative office and EIB)
Adnan is currently working for the Office of Quartets (UN, EU, USA and Russia) as the Gaza Water Coordinator.
